First Look Media is Passionflix’s largest investor, although the company’s chief executive, Michael Bloom, declined to disclose the size of its holding. (Ms Musk remains a majority shareholder in Passionflix.) First Look, founded by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, is made up of several unrelated entities.there is one non-profit organization Focuses on investigative journalism and documentary production. entertainment studio, topic, specializing in famous films such as “Spencer”, “Spotlight” and “The Mauritanian”. A relatively new division offers niche streaming services, including crime-focused Topic.com and Passionflix.
“We fully understand that we’re walking at the foot of an elephant,” Mr Bloom said, referring to full-viewer streaming services such as HBO Max and Netflix. “But we don’t want to be them. Professional services like Passionflix have the opportunity to oversee specific audiences in a way that big mainstream retail companies don’t.”
Romantic escapism used to be a TV show staple. It’s powered by 1980s miniseries (“Bird of Thorn,” “Hollywood Wife”) and 1990s weekly movies (all those moaning Danielle Steel adaptations). But the web largely abandoned these formats in the 2000s. Cost is one reason. The network has also started supporting repeatable crime procedurals and reality shows, including the romance-driven “Bachelor” series.
Only a handful of romance novel adaptations have appeared on television in the past decade. Even fewer (“Outlander” on Starz, “Bridgerton” on Netflix) were hits.
Ms Musk said Passionflix wasn’t a cynical way to profit from the streaming boom. Instead, she and two friends, Jina Panebianco and Joany Kane, wanted to make a spicy love drama but couldn’t find a buyer in Hollywood.
“So we had to create a distribution solution,” Ms. Musk said.
Ms. Musk, named after Puccini’s opera, studied film at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. After graduating in 1997, she worked for the Canadian production company Alliance before moving to Los Angeles to direct, write and produce the film Bewitched (2001) with the support of Elon. She eventually began producing and directing TV movies for Hallmark, Lifetime and ION Television.
But she was frustrated. “I’ve been in conflict with network executives who aren’t interested in stories of empowered women embracing their sexuality.”
