Watch Latin American Music Awards
Over the last several years Hulu has become known for a zeitgeisty documentary slate that covers topics including celebrities, crimes and cults.
Among the watercooler hits the streamer’s doc division has released recently: “Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence,” “God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty,” “Captive Audience,” and “Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons.” Its latest nonfiction release, “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story,” fits into the celebrity side of Hulu’s doc sweetspot.
“Hulu documentaries are very entertainment forward,” says Belisa Balaban, Hulu Originals senior VP unscripted series and documentaries. “We have definitely focused a lot recently on highly visible subjects from pop culture and familiar subject matters as a way into our storytelling. Stories that haven’t really been unpacked the way we were able to explore them in the documentary form.”
“Thank You, Goodnight,” a four-part docuseries that debuts on April 26, chronicling the past and future of the 40 year-old band led by Jon Bon Jovi. Directed by Gotham Chopra (“Man in the Arena”), the series fully sanctioned by Bon Jovi incorporates personal videos, unreleased early demos, original lyrics and never-before-seen photos that chronicle the band’s journey from Jersey Shore clubs to the world’s biggest stages.
“I told Jon that the moment this starts to feel like a vanity piece or an infomercial to sell a new album or to go out on tour again, it just won’t work,” says Chopra. “So he was hands off. He wasn’t a producer on the film and he didn’t have final cut.”
Balaban says that the film was a perfect fit for Hulu. “We are always looking for very specific stories that widen out into larger insights into culture and Bon Jovi epitomizes that.”
Hulu acquired the docuseries in January, a few months prior to the debut of “Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told,” which recounts the rise and fall of a small Atlanta HBCU picnic that exploded into an influential street party and spotlighted ATL as a major cultural stage. The music doc premiered March 21 on Hulu after making its world premiere at SXSW.
Later this year, Hulu will release a doc about Diane von Furstenberg, the influential fashion designer who popularized the women’s wrap dress and “The Contestant,” a film about an aspiring comedian who unknowingly becomes the most famous TV star in Japan.
PvNew spoke to Balaban about acquiring independent content, Hulu’s interest in political docus and how she feels about the current documentary market.
How many Hulu Original docus do you release each year?
It varies slightly. Usually around between seven and 10.
You joined Hulu in 2017 and helped launch originals with docus like Bing Liu’s “Minding the Gap,” which earned the streamer its first ever Oscar nomination in 2019. The film is a look at small-town American life through the lens of a group of skateboarder friends. Given that Hulu’s current doc unit’s brand identity is centered around exploring prominent moments in popular culture, as well as buzzy true crime tales and the lives of famous or infamous figures, would you have bought “Minding the Gap” today?
I would never say no to “Minding the Gap.” We are always looking for very talkable subjects. That is something that defines Hulu nonfiction across the board. We want audiences to not just lean into watching, but then run to their friends and to social media to talk about what they just saw because they are so connected or infuriated or moved or just wildly entertained. That is a touchstone. We are always looking for stories that are a window into highly relevant and urgent themes, and “Minding the Gap” was certainly a window into what it means to grow up as a young man in a very particular place in America. But you’re not wrong in that we have definitely focused a lot recently on highly visible subjects from pop culture and familiar subject matter as a way into our storytelling.
You bought Clair Titley’s “The Contestant,” about a Japanese reality TV star left naked in a room for more than a year, out of TIFF. What made it the right fit for Hulu?
It’s another great example of a story that many Americans may not be familiar with but the minute you hear that longline it’s a lean-in story. You have to hear more. It feels extremely relevant no matter where in the world you are accessing the story from.
Depending on who you talk to, documentaries are either something of a stepchild within the larger Hollywood ecosystem or they are one of the industry’s hottest commodities. Where do you think docs stand within the industry, and do they help build streamer’s subscriber base?
The great gift of streaming is that it has broken down any challenges to accessing documentaries that we had pre-streaming. They just made documentaries more accessible to anyone with a streaming service, and when that happened, audiences discovered how much they love documentary storytelling. What I’ve seen in my almost eight years at Hulu is that documentaries have been a very important part of building our subscriber base and our audience.
It’s not a great time for indie docus about social issues, but celebrity and crime docs are all the rage. What is your take on the current doc landscape?
There is a contraction in the market, and I feel for producers because I know that there are elements of this time that are challenging for them. But I am very bullish on the documentary market right now because I see that there is a strong appetite from audiences, and as long as there is a strong appetite from audiences, I know I’m going to be able to keep programming great films. I also strongly believe that we are in a better place than we have been in the past because there’s just more opportunity for more people to be making a sustainable career out of documentary filmmaking, which wasn’t the case not that long ago. I think that as long as we keep programming films that audiences want to see we will have a strong documentary market.
A very political doc — “20 Days in Mariupol” — won this year’s Oscar for best feature documentary. When a film like that wins such a prestigious award, does that make you think about programming political fare?
It’s a spectacular film and it certainly deserves the recognition, but I don’t think it changes what we are looking for at Hulu. Of course we love the recognition of awards, which we had on the Emmy nomination side with our Hillary Clinton documentary (“Hillary”), “Captive Audience” and “Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons.” But we are really about engaging audiences and I don’t think we are going to change our strategy because we see that what we (are programming) is working.
