With Hollywood’s theatrical output still well shy of what it was before the pandemic, movie theaters are constantly on the search for alternative films to bring to their screens. One of their targets: YouTube.
This month, Regal Cinemas will bring one of the Internet’s most popular creators, Dude Perfect, to the big screen with a documentary around their latest live tour, “The Hero Tour.” Since 2009, the Frisco, Texas-based team of five former Texas A&M classmates has turned their YouTube channel of backyard trick shots into a globetrotting entertainment behemoth that has drawn 61 million subscribers and cameos from Steph Curry, Keanu Reeves, Bryson DeChambeau and dozens more sports and movie stars.
Dude Perfect isn’t the first channel to partner with a major theatrical chain. Last year, Cinemark partnered with Sam & Colby, a Kansas-based YouTuber duo known for their paranormal vlogs for an exclusive release of their film “Legends of the Paranormal” in 302 theaters.
But “Dude Perfect: The Hero Tour,” will go beyond its main partnership with Regal, releasing in other chains’ locations like AMC in an effort to reach out to fans, many of whom are families, who were unable to see the Dudes’ live show.
Adam Rymer, chief commercial officer of Regal, and Matt Deimund, chief product officer of Dude Perfect, spoke to TheWrap about how this partnership came together, where this fits in the larger effort by theaters to experiment with new types of entertainment, and the challenges facing theaters as audience tastes change. The interview has been edited for clarity.
How long has this tour film been in development? How did it come about from the Regal side and the Dude Perfect side?
Adam Rymer: I live in Dallas. I’ve known about the Dude Perfect guys for a very long time and watched them grow as as one of the innovators in the space and building that key fan relationship. I knew that they were really interested in figuring out how to expand the business and knew that they were doing these summer tours. I happened to be at a dinner event with the new (Dude Perfect) CEO, Andrew Yaffe. We’re just talking about what we were up to, and through that talk the idea of putting this up on our screens resonated with their plans as they were already thinking about recording the tour and were figuring out how to exploit it.
Matt Deimund: The idea and concept to make a movie out of our tour really came fairly late in the game. There have been other creators that have appeared in cinemas, there have been other tour documentaries that have appeared, but we just found ourselves in a situation where the demand for our tour was so high. We launched ticket sales for our tour in October and by Christmas we were 70% sold out across all dates for a tour that wasn’t happening until July. By the time the tour began, we had sold 95% of all tickets and prices on the secondary market were very high.
It was around last spring that we approached Regal about the idea for this film, hoping to appeal to both fans who saw the tour and those who couldn’t go because of ticket prices or the tour didn’t come to their city. The great thing about Dude Perfect is that we are very nimble and can work fast on these films, and these tour documentaries usually take much longer to make. But this was going to be something where we would really challenge ourselves.
We saw Cinemark do a similar partnership with Sam & Colby last year. Adam, where would you say “The Hero Tour” fits in this larger wave of bringing YouTubers to theaters?
A.R.: I think we’re still in the early stages of this. YouTubers have very passionate communities, but they have very few opportunities to bring them together in person. I don’t know if this is the ultimate format for bringing them together. I think there’s more things that we can do in theater, but I’d say this is the beginning of an experimentation, telling content creators that our theaters serve as a place for their communities to gather, get to meet each other, have some kind of shared experiences. Maybe there’s some sort of live event that goes along with that in the theater, leveraging the fact that we have real estate and a pretty big footprint across the country to bring fans together. And the good thing is that these content creators are very imaginative and know the best ways to engage their audience.
Matt, what input did the Dude Perfect cast have on “The Hero Tour”?
M.D.: It is truly a privilege to work with these guys, because they’ve got such creative vision and have such a history, obviously, with the brand and knowing how to engage with fans. We spent a lot of time working with them on what should the movie feel like. What should it feel like to someone who’s already seen the show and they’re watching it and kind of reliving their experience? How do we give them some new things along with the nostalgia of how fun it was when they saw the show live?
With digital media like YouTube, you’re getting immediate feedback from fans and the pipeline from idea to a new video being published goes so fast. Does that fast production speed at Dude Perfect spill over to your work as chief product officer?
M.D.: When you work in the world of digital content, you have the ability to test and try so many things, and you can do it at a very rapid pace. You can test how thumbnails perform, how concepts of videos perform, and days later have results come in.
In the world of physical products, that gets a little bit more challenging, because it takes some time to work through logistics, supply chains and other real world hurdles. But when you think about a tour movie, for example, it’s not as fast as how we can experiment on YouTube, for sure, but it’s still something where we’ve really pushed ourselves to find the scrappy kind of creator mindset that we can apply to this product.
Adam, films like “The Hero Tour” are coming at a time when it’s unclear when or even if major studio theatrical output will return to pre-pandemic levels. As you’ve navigated all the roadblocks the box office has faced since the pandemic, what gives you the most hope for exhibition’s future, and what is the biggest challenge still facing your industry?
A.R.: There were a lot of positive aspects of this summer. The performance of some new players in the space gets me very excited. We’ve seen plenty of younger folks come in and have a good time at the theater with “K-Pop Demon Hunters” and before that with films like “Minecraft.”
Those were films that brought something fresh and got lots of people excited, even with the popcorn throwing and everything else that came with it. Just the fact that so many were having a great time gets me excited about the future of our industry, including with the growth of premium formats like 4DX that offer something that you can’t get at home.
In terms of challenges, shortening windows are an area that we’re still trying to work through, as we want to make sure that films have an appropriate amount of time to reach the audience. We’ve seen the value of a theatrical release in terms of generating value for the IP that’s out there. They understand where we’re coming from, and at certain level, we understand where they’re coming from as well, trying to maximize the marketing dollars that have been spent to support a title.
Matt, “The Hero Tour” is Dude Perfect’s fifth live tour. While feedback from the fans is still forthcoming, could this tour film impact future tours and other in-person events the company is planning?
M.D.: I think we learned a whole lot about how in the future we would format and think about our live show, if the intent from the very beginning is to create a cinematic product. That’s the benefit of being at a very agile place. So absolutely, as we see this release and launch in theaters, we’ll be looking every step of the way at how this resonates with our core fans and with those who maybe are just getting to know us.
We’re constantly taking that stream of feedback into everything we do, whether it’s on our main channel, new channels, cinema or whether that’s other mainstream media sources, podcasts, streaming, you name it. Even with the other physical and digital products that we create, I think our success comes from our willingness to test and learn.
