Fear of a Tubi Original

Tubi has launched several high-profile original films in recent months, but Ron wonders if that is a sign of positive change or an early warning sign of Tubi’s impending death.

When Fox Corporation purchased Tubi for $440 million dollars in 2020, things immediately started changing for the formerly independent streaming service. Tubi launched on April Fool’s Day 2014 with a dream and a library of 20,000 licensed movies from across the corporate multiverse. It wasn’t an immediate gangbusters hit, but Tubi performed well enough that it expanded nationwide 15 days after launch and very quickly carved a niche out for itself as being the free ad-supported streaming (FAST) service for people who like, let’s say… offbeat movies.

Brokering deals with Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount, and others, Tubi didn’t look for the sorts of movies that Netflix was paying millions of dollars for. Tubi looked at the stuff that studios couldn’t sell to streamers and said, “Great, we’ll take it!” No viewer ratings, no popularity charts, no public acknowledgment of what’s hot and what’s not. The weird dregs of studio acquisitions were what Tubi gobbled up, like a racoon in a dumpster full of discarded SPAM. Tubi wasn’t Netflix, and didn’t want to be Netflix. Tubi was and is the alternative Netflix for stuff normal people aren’t interested in.

Then, Fox stepped in. By 2021, Tubi branched out into making Tubi Originals, which quite frankly is something nobody was asking for or particularly interested in thanks to parent umbrella group Tubi Media Group. By leveraging viewer interest metrics, Tubi’s corporate overlords had the idea to give the people more of what they want instead of just buying movie rights. People watch a lot of true crime content?  Tubi will make cheap documentaries. People watch shark movies? Tubi makes a shark movie. People watch a lot of horror movies? Tubi gets into the horror business. Admittedly, they do this cheaply by commissioning and financing movie projects to grow those content areas and they don’t run a huge Netflix-style backlot, but things seem to be changing.

Tubi has always been a partner for independent filmmakers through their connections with aggregators like Filmhub and Indie Rights. Filmmakers upload their movies to those services, Tubi scrapes those services for content, and filmmakers enter into a revenue sharing model with Tubi. If people watch the movie, then filmmakers get paid a percentage of ad revenue generated by the film. If the film takes off, the tier of ads served goes higher. After Tubi’s 50% share of revenue and the cut taken by the aggregating service, a successful enough film can net filmmakers well into six figures just from Tubi alone. There’s no up front investment by Tubi using this model, and it’s pretty safe to assume if Joe Smith’s shark attack movie is successful, Tubi would be willing to reach out to Joe Smith for another shark attack movie to get the Tubi Originals tag.

Already, Tubi’s mission is creeping into creation, not simply distribution. Distribution remains Tubi’s main mission, but working with independent filmmakers and creating Tubi Originals isn’t something the original company had ever attempted when it was an independent operation. The shift to content creation has only accelerated since the first batch of Tubi Originals debuted. In 2025, Tubi launched the Creatorverse incubator which is designed to help TikTok creators jump into the long-form film game. Tubi has even recruited TikTok stars like KevOnStage to put their entire output onto the Tubi platform and onto the Amazon Fire environment through a distribution deal in which Tubi acts as the distributor for the content, rather than a consumer of the content.

For those keeping score at home, Tubi has gone from a FAST streamer to a FAST streamer, movie studio, distribution house, and cultivator of social media influencers. Oh, and Tubi is also in the podcast game, too.

Also in 2025, Tubi Media Group bought Red Seat Ventures, a podcasting creation outlet. Through them, Tubi had made a deal with Audiochuck, the powerhouse podcast network behind true crime hits like CRIME JUNKIES, and is in the process of building a dedicated 24/7 channel solely for CRIME JUNKIES video podcast library. While Tubi has a few streaming channels, it’s mostly for on-demand watching, or it was until…

June 2026. That’s when Tubi announced that it will be merging with Roku after Fox purchased Roku outright for $22 billion dollars. Tubi’s audience has traditionally been an on-demand audience, and their channels were kind of an afterthought. Roku’s audience watch channels, and their on-demand content options are generally not as popular. The merger gives Tubi an additional outlet and prominent placement in Roku’s interface and allows them to operate more efficiently on the ad-sales side thanks to Roku’s hardware user base and popularity. Seems like a win-win, and on the surface it is.

However, it’s what’s under the surface that is troubling. Tubi isn’t supposed to own podcasts and have a development slate and a mentoring program. Tubi is where you go when you want to stream some crazy horror movie half-remembered from a drunk night in college when it popped up at 3 AM on Cinemax, or where an independent film like the madness of VELOCIPASTOR can get eyeballs and make money on the merits of its uniqueness. Tubi’s mission isn’t to make a TikTok star into the next Zach Cregger or Curry Barker, it’s to give weirdos an outlet for their weird movies and to give horror-obsessed fans the chance to see something weird and forgotten about.

Tubi has a niche, and it’s straying further from that niche with every corporate acquisition and merger. This has happened dozens of times over the years; TLC used to be The Learning Channel and traded surgical procedures in for reality TV. SyFy used to be The Sci-Fi Channel and showed actual science fiction movies, not whatever Universal movie other networks weren’t interested in. I love CON AIR, but it’s not sci-fi and it shouldn’t be on the former Sci-Fi Channel’s airwaves. In pursuit of bigger audiences, networks like MTV and SyFy and TLC lost what made them successful in the first place, their niche in the television ecosystem.

If Tubi isn’t careful, they’ll end up the same way. The name will still exist, and the app will continue to serve up content, but Tubi won’t be the same Tubi that allowed it to grow from a US startup to having 110 million active monthly users throughout the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK in a decade. Growth metrics might be positive, but not all growth is positive. Betting on Gen Z is smart, and democratizing film production is both lucrative and noble, but alienating the existing fanbase of movie nerds would be a terrible idea.

Tread carefully, Tubi, and don’t forget just who you really are. You’re not an incubator; you’re a trash can. That’s why people love you.

Ron Hogan is a writer, podcaster, gadabout, and raconteur from Louisville, Kentucky. You can read his written works at Den of Geek, Film Stories, and at several magazines and sites that no longer exist. You can hear his voice (and potentially see his magnificent beard) on the Film Strip Podcast.

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