Robert Rodriguez’s El Rey Network to Begin Streaming on the Roku Channel

Robert Rodriguez is livin’ a new stream

The 53-year-old Mexican American filmmaker’s El Rey Network, which is making a rare transition from cable television to free streaming, has set a deal for crucial real estate on the Roku Channel.

Robert Rodriguez

Starting tomorrow, the network founded by Rodriguez will start streaming as a 24-7 linear offering on the Roku Channel, one of more than 190 on the free outlet.

Launched in 2013 as a result of the agreement reached by Comcast and NBCUniversal with regulators yielding new commitments to diverse programming options, El Rey targeted young, English-speaking Latino viewers. It wound down its nearly decade-long run on traditional pay-TV at the end of 2020, having peaked at 40 million households. While other channels have gone dark on cable and returned as digital properties, El Rey is one of the first to attempt such a shift during the streaming era.

The Roku Channel, which has 40,000 on-demand film and television titles in addition to its linear offerings, reaches households with 70 million people. Since launching in 2017, it has become a leading home for free, ad-supported streaming, ranking as the No. 6 overall streaming site in a June Nielsen gauge of household reach. In the spring, Roku Channel launched an original programming banner, whose initial slate includes Quibi titles acquired last January.

With recent data suggesting that 60% of Hispanic viewers regularly stream free, ad-supported services, several other programmers have jumped into the fray. Pluto and Tubi have launched Spanish-language efforts and Univision (initially an investor in the El Rey network) just launched PrendeTV. But El Rey’s backers see little overlap in their streaming effort, which trades as the network always has on Rodriguez’s personal tastes and eclectic resume as the director of an eclectic roster of films from Spy Kids to From Dusk Till Dawn to Sin City.

El Rey does not plan an initial investment in original programming, with its 150 hours of originals almost entirely consisting of previously produced fare. The Roku Channel will be the exclusive first AVOD destination for Rodriguez’s feature film Red 11, which had a festival circuit run. Rebel Without a Crew: The Robert Rodriguez Film School will be another exclusive, starting in the first quarter of 2022. Other shows from El Rey include The Director’s Chair, featuring conversations between Rodriguez and guests like John Carpenter and Quentin Tarantino; and Cutting Crew, which is centered at a barbershop outside of Philadelphia; and El Rey Nation, a geek-fandom panel series.

Roku VP of Programming Rob Holmes told Deadline in an interview that the arrangement would give El Rey access to “millions of engaged streamers.” In the streaming world, he added, networks need to do four things well: deliver compelling programming; create a compelling user experience; acquire and retain users; and then monetize those users. Most programmers are comfortable with only the first of the four, he said.

“You’ve seen huge investments from big folks like Disney,” he said, “but there are many people who aren’t prepared to do those other three things. Recognizing that, they can be very successful at doing that first thing, which they’ve always been good at. …. They can rely on the Roku Channel to bring these other three capabilities and do it at a really big scale.”

Cinedigm, a specialist in streaming, joined forces with El Rey to take its network into the digital realm and refine the user experience. Unlike many other cable networks during the 2010s, El Rey never built an authenticated TV Everywhere app.

John Fogelman, CEO of FactoryMade Ventures and a co-founder of El Rey, told Deadline Rodriguez had been envisioning a leap to streaming since at least 2020. The environment “feels much more right” than cable, he said, but “it just wasn’t available when we started.”

Fogelman said El Rey will aim to use Roku as the foundation for other streaming deals with other providers. The economics of digital distribution are different from traditional pay-TV, where programmers get a dual revenue stream via carriage fees and advertising. Streaming channels take part in a revenue share from both distribution and ads, but the margins are slimmer and the tech platforms control most of the viewership data. Along with the technical challenges involved in taking a channel from cable to streaming, Fogelman said the whole experience was tantamount to “ripping off the Band-Aid.”

Based on initial feedback through various channels, he said, viewers are grateful to have a chance to keep tuning in. “That beat-up crown that Robert designed” in the El Rey logo, Fogelman said, “really means a lot to a lot of people.”

Ashley Hovey, Director of AVOD, The Roku Channel, said El Rey fits the Roku business model and the realities of streaming. Nine out of 10 U.S. Hispanic households are now streaming in the U.S., she said, making it “clear there is a growing demand for engaging, high quality Latinx entertainment. El Rey is changing the programming world in an exciting way that speaks to the future of audience discovery and engagement.”

Tubi Acquires Streaming Rights to Robert Rodriguez’s Sci-Fi Horror Film”Red 11″ & Companion Docuseries

Life is but a stream for Robert Rodriguez

Tubi has scored the exclusive streaming rights to the 51-year-old Mexican American filmmaker and visual effects supervisor’s sci-fi horror film Red 11as well as his docuseries The Robert Rodriguez Film School.

Robert Rodriguez

Red 11 is based on Rodriguez’s experiences in a medical research facility to finance his first feature El Mariachi

The film, which made its world premiere at SXSW and went on to play in the Directors Fortnightsection at the Cannes Film Festival, is set in the dark, twisted world of legal drug research. College kids turn lab rats to make quick money. The film’s protagonist Rob (who is assigned the color and number Red 11), is trying to buy his way out of a huge debt to the tune of $7K. But things get surreal when he’s not sure if the hospital is really trying to kill him, or if it’s side effects from the experimental drugs.

Red 11 will hit the free ad-supported streaming service in the U.S., Canada and Mexico this summer.

Robert Rodriguez Film School is the companion piece to Red 11that explains the director’s guerrilla filmmaking process, while speaking to filmmakers and entrepreneurs alike on overcoming the perceived limitations of time, budget and other variables.

“I’m thrilled to be partnering with Tubi to deliver Red 11and its accompanying Film School docuseries free of charge and easily accessible to all audiences,” said Rodriguez. “I made both Red 11and the Film School series to celebrate the 25th anniversary of El Mariachi, and this project shows truly actionable methods using my no crew, micro budget filmmaking style that will inspire others to make their own films and have their voices be heard. These are both dream projects of mine, an entertaining culmination of ideas and ruminations on the creative process that also highlight the heightened sense of spirituality that comes from dancing with creativity when there is an absence of the usual financial resources. In other words, ‘low budget fun.’”

Red 11 and the story of how Robert made this movie is inspirational to up-and-coming filmmakers,” said Adam Lewinson, Chief Content Officer, Tubi. “We are thrilled to amplify Robert’s message to the next generation of filmmakers as a part of our commitment to helping independent films find a wide audience.”

Tubi counts more than 20K movies and TV series – more than double the size of Netflix. This month it was announced that Tubi will launch in Mexico with TV Azteca, one of the two largest producers of Spanish-language TV programming in the world. 

Tubi is available on Hisensetelevisions, Android and iOS mobile devices, Amazon Echo ShowGoogle Nest Hub MaxComcast Xfinity X1Cox Contour, and on OTT devices like Amazon Fire TVVizio TVs, SonyTVs, SamsungTVs, RokuApple TVChromecastAndroidTV, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.