Funny or Die - the Will Ferrell-fueled HBO-funded comedy club treehouse where a Judd Apatow film credit gains you automatic entry – has stayed relevant thanks to hit, after hit, after hit. If someone in Hollywood’s in-crowd wants to make fun of Tom Cruise or get out the vote, it’s to this domain name they come a-knockin’.
The site’s overall mandate may still be unclear (Is it an aggregator of funny videos? Or is it an off-shoot of Will Ferrell’s brand? Or is it something else?), but the fact that it’s able to wrangle such A-list talent (in droves, even) means that when it stops treating original online videos like a playground and starts taking the medium seriously, it’s going to have a helluva lot of talented people to work with.
Exhibit A: Prop 8 – The Musical.
It’s for a special cause, sure, but still, the short was conceived by Marc Shaiman, directed by Adam Shankman, and features, Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris, John C. Reilly, Allison Janney, Kathy Najimy, Craig Robinson, Andy Richter, Maya Rudolph, Rashida, Jones, Lake Bell, Sarah Chalke, Margaret Cho, Jenifer Lewis, and Nicole Parker.
You don’t have to love it (I like it, but I’ll watch anything in which Neil Patrick Harris breaks into song). It just shows that when the good people at Funny or Die get into the Online Entertainment Business instead of the Online Viral Entertainment business, they’re going to be packin’ some talent. Be prepared to be entertained.
Comments
What’s wrong with an “Online Entertainment Business” whose videos go viral. I feel like you’re needlessly separating the two.
Jamison is right.
If there was such a thing as real “overhead” in a virtual entertainment business, doesn’t going viral reduce that? Let me say it another way.
It seems to me that viral videos are so successful because they are not produced in the same hothouse of egos and personality conflicts that happen in a production house.
It’s easier to take them on board if you catch my drift. They come from outside. Everyone is so interested in something that comes from outside, rather than within in the web 2.0 community.
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