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Indie streamer Nebula has set the leads for its upcoming anthology series “Sub/liminal,” which boasts multiple Broadway staples.

Nebula describes the six-episode series as in the same vein as “The Twilight Zone” and “Black Mirror,” as it “explores power dynamics in human relationships, and what can happen when those relationships fall out of balance.”

Among the stars set to head up “Sub/liminal” are Joseph Cross, Tony winner and Grammy nominee Lena Hall, Olivier and Grammy nominee Caissie Levy, Tony and Emmy winner Kecia Lewis (”Hell’s Kitchen”), Tony nominee and Grammy winner Patrick Page (”Hadestown”) and Tony winner John Rubinstein.

The first season of “Sub/liminal,” which began filming May 19 and is set to premiere in late 2025, includes episodes written and directed by popular creators on the Nebula platform, including Patrick Willems, Amir Moini, Jacob Torpey, Jessie Earl, Joe Scott, Tom van der Linden, Matthew Kelly and Tiana Michele.

A docuseries about the University of Chicago’s famed annual scavenger hunt is coming to indie streamer Nebula from the team behind hit travel competition “Jet Lag: The Game.”

Directed by “Jet Lag” star Adam Chase and produced by Wendover Productions, “Scav” is described as “a chaotic, heartfelt docuseries following competitors in the largest annual scavenger hunt in the world.”

Per the description for the new docuseries, “Every year, a 20-page Scavenger Hunt list plunges the University of Chicago into fun, sleepless chaos. This series will bring the audience into the action, following three top teams as they race to complete the list, and answering the question of what happens when the best and brightest turn their focus towards the silliest things you’ve ever seen.”

Executive producers include Nebula founder Dave Wiskus and Wendover Productions chief and “Jet Lag” star Sam Denby. Graham Haerther, Tyson Kroening and Christine Benedetti are executive co-producers.

Indie streamer Nebula is expanding its scripted slate with a dark “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse”-esque comedy series from popular creator and YouTube star Maggie Mae Fish.

Per Nebula’s description for the “kids’ show for adults” series, “Welcome to ‘Amy’s Dead-End Dreamhouse,’ where a millennial navigating mental illness, job hunting, and impossible beauty standards gets life advice from her sentient household objects, unhinged guests, and surreal commercial breaks—turning adulthood into a fever-dream comedy.”

The six-episode series stars Maggie Mae Fish as the titular Amy, as well as Natalie Palamides, Bill Corbett, and Paul F. Tompkins. Special guests for “Amy’s Dead-End Dreamhouse” include Katya, Ify Nwadiwe, Jamie Loftus and Percy Rustomji. Musical guests include Tessa Violet and Sunder.

“Amy’s Dead-End Dreamhouse” is created by Fish and Will Reese, who together serve as showrunners. Fish writes the scripts alongside Bailey Norton. Executive producers include Nebula founder and CEO Dave Wiskus and Trenton Waterson.

A streaming service that provides a home for “education-ish” creators is extending its reach to the world of cinema. Nebula has announced that it will “build the pipeline from digital to Hollywood” by offering to distribute indie shows and movies alongside the platform’s existing educational content.

Nebula Founder Dave Wiskus explained his company’s approach to content distribution in a blog post. He contended that Nebula creators are not bound by any particular category but by their status as storytellers. Within that community, indie filmmakers and showrunners are natural fits.

“We think it’s time to expand the toolbox a little and make room for more storytellers,” Wiskus wrote. “We want to make Nebula a home for indie filmmakers in the same way we made it a home for factual creators.”

Nebula has already used its original content slates to produce film-length projects led by members of its creator community.

Indie streamer Nebula has unveiled its first original scripted series, dark anthology Sub/liminal with Oscar winner Dan Jinks on board to executive produce.

Sub/liminal is touted as resembling The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror as it explores power dynamics in human relationships and what happens when those relationships go off kilter. The first season will be six standalone episodes, with stories from Nebula content creators brought to the screen by seasoned directors and producers.

The series is set to begin production later this year and underlines efforts by Nebula as an indie streaming platform to work with big name Hollywood players.

“Dan Jinks has an Oscar. I’m doing whatever he says,” Nebula CEO Dave Wiskus said in a statement.

For his part, Jinks, who produced the Oscar-winning American Beauty movie, which starred Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening, welcomed collaborating with Nebula as it looks to compete in...

Indie streaming service Nebula has set its first-ever scripted original series, “Sub/liminal,” with Oscar-winning producer Dan Jinks on board to executive produce.

Per Nebula, “The new dark anthology series from the indie streamer will be in the vein of The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror. The show will explore power dynamics in human relationships, and what can happen when those relationships fall out of balance.”

The six-episode first season of “Sub/liminal” will feature stories from Nebula creators made in partnership with seasoned directors and producers. Nebula CEO Dave Wiskus will executive produce alongside Jinks.

“Sub/liminal” is set to begin production later this year.

“I’m very much looking forward to working with Dave Wiskus and the amazing writers and directors he has assembled at Nebula for this exciting new series,” Jinks said.

Wiskus added: “Dan Jinks has an Oscar, I’m doing whatever he says.”

The series...

The team behind indie streamer Nebula’s hit travel competition series “Jet Lag: The Game” has revealed their next project: “Abolish Everything!,” a comedy debate series based on comedian Chandler Dean’s live show of the same name in New York City.

Per the description for “Abolish Everything!,” which will be hosted by Dean himself, “comedian-abolitionists roast a pet peeve they want banned from society, while a panel of improvisers dubbed ‘The Political Establishment’ argue on behalf of the status quo. The audience chooses their champion each episode, each of whom will come back to compete in the season finale.”

The series will be executive produced by Sam Denby, who is both chief content officer at Nebula and founder of “Jet Lag: The Game” maker Wendover Productions, alongside Nebula CEO Dave Wiskus and Dean, as well as Wendover Productions’ Amy Muller, who will act as showrunner and director on the “Abolish Everything!

Nebula has set the cast for its upcoming short film from “Night of the Coconut” director and popular video essayist Patrick Willems, “The Dinner Plan.” A dark comedy about a guy with a rare food allergy who’s trying to make it through a stressful dinner party at his boss’s house, the cast includes “The Tick” star Griffin Newman, “American Fiction’s” Miriam Shor and “Severance” star Zach Cherry, among four other stars.

Per the logline for “The Dinner Plan,” “When he’s pressured into attending a dinner party hosted by his boss, a man who suffers from a rare food allergy must navigate the most stressful night of his life with one primary objective: just don’t throw up in front of everyone.”

Actors joining the ensemble cast for the project include Newman, Shor, John Hodgman, Eudora Peterson, Geoffrey Cantor, Cherry and Cindy Cheung.

From left to right: Griffin Newman,...

RiffTrax, the entertainment and live event company founded by a trio of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” stars, has struck a distribution deal with indie streamer Nebula.

The pact will see RiffTrax bring its existing views as well as new originals to the platform, a streamer which is majority owned by a collective of Nebula creators.

Beginning Oct. 5, RiffTrax will launch its weekly “Saturday Cinema” series on Nebula, beginning with the release of five shorts including commentary. This week’s release is a version of “Night of the Living Dead” with their classic RiffTrax-style commentary.

Founded by “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ alums Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett in 2006, RiffTrax is an entertainment company producing content with “MST3K”-type commentary for films across genres.

RiffTrax has a library of over 1,000 titles and has produced five primetime television specials for the National Geographic Channel, two apps and an official game, “RiffTrax: The Game,...

Following its price increase earlier this month, indie streamer Nebula is launching a new initiative to up its subscriber count.

Beginning Tuesday, current Nebula customers be given one “guest pass” per month for monthly subscribers, or three per quarter for annual and lifetime accounts, that they can offer to anyone for a week-long free trial of Nebula, as long as that person is new to Nebula. The recipient of the guest pass will be able to sign up without payment info, download the Nebula app and watch content at no cost for seven days.

While some Nebula videos, those marked with a “black timebox,” can be viewed for free without a subscription, much of the streamer’s content is now exclusive or early access and is fully paywalled. The streamer is best known for programming, including its popular travel competition series “Jet Lag: The Game” and a large library of...

Nebula CEO Dave Wiskus says he gets asked all the time how supporters can give Nebula more money.

Nebula is one of the most fascinating streaming services on the market. Unlike Hollywood’s biggest services like Netflix and Disney+, Nebula’s content is user-generated, and the streamer does not rely on ads to bring in revenue. But even a streamer as unique as Nebula isn’t immune to the pressures of the marketplace, which is why the streamer is increasing its subscription rate by $1 per month for new customers starting on Sept. 1.

Key Details: Nebula is increasing in price from $5 per month to $6. The service is expanding the types of content it offers, including more prestige-style TV. Existing customers will not see their price rise for some time, if ever. Sign Up $6+ / month nebula.app

For those unfamiliar with the streamer, Nebula is a creator-owned service that hosts videos made by its community.

Just as the much-anticipated 11th season of hit travel competition series “Jet Lag: The Game” takes flight on Nebula, the indie streamer will be implementing its first-ever major price increase on Sept. 1.

Major is of course relative, because the creator-owned streamer, which is currently priced at $5 per month and $50 annually, will be hiking its fee by a whopping $1 to reach $6 per month and $60 annually, in comparison to the cost of Netflix, Max and the similar mega streamers that have also recently undergone a round of price increases.

Nebula also offers one specific deal its those much larger streamers don’t: specialized codes promoted by Nebula creators in their content that give a 40% discount on that new annual membership price down to $36.

And all of these changes only apply to new subscribers, as Nebula says it will continue to honor the current rate for existing customers — and rolled out that info Aug.

There’s a meta moment in Season 8 of “Jet Lag: The Game” when the stars of the unscripted travel competition series are seated on a plane behind a fan watching an episode of the show on the streaming platform Nebula. Catching a “Jet Lag” viewer in the wild would have been unthinkable when the series bowed in 2022. But not anymore.

Nebula is part of a wave of streamer startups that are owned by content creators and cater to niche audiences and passionate fandoms. The list also includes Dropout (formerly known as CollegeHumor) and Beacon, a tabletop roleplaying game-focused service that evolved from the YouTube channel Critical Role (which boasts 2.3 million subscribers).

These outlets bill themselves as vehicles for reaching the super fans of their niches, and they wear their independence like a badge: No venture capitalists or pesky parent companies to answer to.

Sam Reich, CEO of Dropout, draws a...

YouTube has warned tech companies that some AI practices violate the platform’s terms of service, but that caution hasn’t stopped the unauthorized use of videos for the purpose of AI training. Top creators like Marques Brownlee have spoken out after their content was included in a widely-circulated data set dubbed “the Pile.”

According to an investigation from Proof News, tech companies like Apple, Nvidia, and Anthropic have employed the Pile for training purposes. YouTube content in the Pile includes subtitles from 173,536 YouTube videos, which originate from more than 48,000 channels.

Some of that YouTube content comes from sources — like the educational hub Khan Academy — that make sense as training material for generative AI models. In other cases, users of the Pile encountered content from top creators like MrBeast, Brownlee, and Jacksepticeye, even though those YouTube power players did not approve the use of their videos for AI training purposes.

Streaming giant Spotify and creator-focused Nebula are teaming up on a video content initiative.

The partnership will bring videos from Nebula to Spotify’s 615 million-plus global users. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Creators who are part of the initial Nebula slate include CinemaWins, Charles Cornell, Hello Future Me, Captain Midnight, Tale Foundry, Game Makers ToolKit, Todd in the Shadows, Adam Neely, The Closer Look, Fd Signifier, and Kat Blaque.

While Spotify has previously explored original video, only to later back away from the space amid a cluster of new competition and a need to streamline and refine its focus, the new partnership fits its current strategy of embracing the creator economy. Across its other businesses, the company has shifted toward creators after a number of talent deals with more conventional names yielded mixed results.

“Creators are at the core of everything we do at Spotify, so we are eager to partner with Nebula,...

Creator-owned streaming service Nebula has snagged a video content deal with Spotify.

That deal will bring content from some of Nebula’s 100+ education-oriented creators to the Spotify for Podcasters hub, which currently offers more than 2.5 million watchable episodes of podcasts. Video content has been a major focus for Spotify in its quest to outdo other podcast-offering platforms; it’s made several high-profile (and high-dollar-amount) deals for video podcasts, including its $100 million drop on The Joe Rogan Experience.

Nebula, meanwhile, was founded in 2019 by CEO Dave Wiskus as a “thoughtful expansion pack for YouTube” where participating creators earn revenue from views and get an ownership stake in the platform.

From their partnership, Spotify will get an opening slate of content from YouTubers including CinemaWins, Charles Cornell, Hello Future Me, Captain Midnight, Tale Foundry, Game Makers ToolKit, Todd in the Shadows, Adam Neely, The Closer Look, Fd Signifier, and Kat Blaque.

“Creators...

The “Jet Lag: The Game” creators Sam Denby, Ben Doyle and Adam Chase have set their next reality travel competition series, “The Getaway,” to debut this summer on indie streamer Nebula.

The show, which unlike “Jet Lag” (where episodes drop later on YouTube) will be available exclusively on Nebula, follows six creators on a road trip through the American West as they compete in a game of social strategy and deception.

While the majority of the details surrounding “The Getaway’s” format are being kept under wraps by Denby’s Wendover Productions, Variety has confirmed the cast includes Foreign Man in a Foreign Land, Matt Krol, Morning Brew’s Dan Toomey, Georgia Dow, Patrick “Patch” Lacey and Steven Bridges.

Production on the series kicks off April 8.

Though it’s from the same team that makes “Jet Lag: The Game,” “The Getaway” is a separate project from that travel competition series,...

On the creator-focused streaming service Nebula, it’s time to duel.

Duelist Mansion, a Yu-Gi-Oh!-inspired competition series hosted by Patch Lacey of TierZoo, is one of the seven programs that compose Nebula’s current slate of originals. The company’s forthcoming shows will arrive on its namesake subscription platform, where viewers pay $5 per month to access nerdy, educational, and gamified videos.

In a statement, Nebula CEO Dave Wiskus described the slate as a “dynamic” initiative that will include episodic series, game shows, standalone long-form pieces, a holiday special, and much more. Six of the seven originals are expected to premiere in 2023. The lone exception is Identiteaze, a short film helmed by creator Jessie Earl (a.k.a. Jessie Gender). The queer sci-fi project is due out in early 2024.

Nebula arrived in 2019 as an expansion of the Standard creator community. The platform grew rapidly thanks to hit shows like Jet Lag...

Nebula, the creator-owned streaming service that bills itself as a “thoughtful expansion pack for YouTube,” has made Wendover Productions, Half as Interesting, and Jet Lag creator Sam Denby its chief content officer.

Denby has been YouTubing since 2010, and has amassed more than 7 million subscribers across all his channels. His largest channel is his flagship Wendover Productions, with 4.3 million subscribers and 630 million lifetime views. Wendover features hundreds of in-depth video essays about “how the world works,” covering subjects like economics and geography.

A Wendover Productions vid about Nebula’s origins and economics.

Nebula says tapping Denby for this position is “a move aimed at highlighting the company’s priority of keeping direction and power in the hands of its creators,” especially as “entertainment’s business model continues to buckle under fair-compensation pushback from artists and creatives alike.”

Founder and CEO Dave Wiskus adds that “the process for developing Nebula Originals should be creator-led,...

Anita Sarkeesian wants to talk about That Time When.

And by That Time When, we mean her new web series–an original production by creator-owned streaming service Nebula and Sarkeesian’s first show since her 2013-2017 YouTube series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games.

For those unfamiliar, Tropes vs. examined the prevalence of common tropes like the stereotypical damsel in distress in video games, and making it catapulted Sarkeesian into the spotlight as a central target of the misogynist Gamergate movement. Like other women in Gamergate’s crosshairs, Sarkeesian was swamped with rape and death threats, and understandably has been leery of returning to making videos on the internet at all, let alone on YouTube.

That’s why she decided to make them on Nebula instead, she says. Nebula is a 5-a-month streaming service founded in 2019 by creator network Standard. It hosts content from around 160 self-described “education-y” creators, including Lindsay Ellis,...