Vice Media and Fox Corporation’s Tubi are partnering on a new series of documentaries, the companies announced in a press release on Monday.
The deal will see Vice produce at least eight documentaries that will debut on Tubi, the ad-supported streaming service Fox acquired several years ago.
“Vice has a longstanding reputation of award-winning investigative storytelling and we’re excited to expand Tubi Original Documentaries with their expertise,” Adam Lewinson, the chief content officer at Tubi, said in a statement. “These original documentaries will raise the curtain and spark conversation on stories that tap into today’s cultural zeitgeist, including ticket scalping, chatbots and the rise of online vigilantism.”
Tubi already distributes some Vice Media content, including documentaries and television shows that aired on the Vice cable channel. Vice also has a free, ad-supported streaming channel that is carried on Tubi.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Tubi to take a deep dive into some of today’s most timely and compelling issues with these eight brand-new documentaries,” Morgan Hertzan, the president of global television at Vice, said on Monday.
The first documentary to debut on Tubi under its partnership with Vice will be “The Cult of Elon,” which takes a look at the technology mogul’s efforts to build Tesla into an electric vehicle powerhouse as well as his recent purchase of social media platform Twitter. The documentary will include interviews with journalists, technology experts and self-proclaimed fans of Musk; the mogul himself did not participate in the program. The documentary will stream on Tubi starting April 24.
The second program under the partnership is “Vigilante, Inc.,” which spotlights the growing trend of online vigilantism, primarily through social media platforms (like, coincidentally, the one musk owns and operates). The documentary will focus primarily on a recent manhunt for a serial arsonist who terrorized a neighborhood in Los Angeles, with ordinary citizens using online apps to track the suspect down. That program lands on May 6.
Other documentaries have yet to be announced, but the shows will explore a variety of topics that are synonymous with the type of written and video journalism familiar to anyone who has followed the Vice brand over the years. Those topics include mass shootings, artificial intelligence technology and the rise of online ticket scalping.
“We are so looking forward to bringing our cinematic storytelling and fearless journalism to the Tubi audience,” Subrata De, the executive vice president of Vice News, said on Monday.
Tubi is available as a free streaming app on all popular smart television platforms (Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV/Google TV, Apple TV, Samsung TV Plus, LG Channels, Vizio SmartCast and others), phones, tablets and via the Tubi website.
