Roy Price is getting into the microseries space. Getty Images Roy Price, the former head of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, who stepped down in 2017, is back with his latest entertainment venture.
The studio exec is getting into the fast-growing microseries industry by launching a platform today with a very tongue-in-cheek name: The Number One Best Website, aka N1BW for short.
“I actually kind of like the fact that it’s absurdly long, and it uses the term website, which feels kind of like the year 2000 or something,” Price exclusively tells Page Six Hollywood of the venture. “It’s meant to have a sense of humor.”
Price is the latest well-known Hollywood name to join the microseries boom, alongside a rapidly growing list that includes Susan Rovner, Jana Winograde and Lloyd Braun, as well as Bill Block, Jeffery Katzenberg and Issa Rae. But N1BW will work a little differently, Price explains.
For starters, the platform works more like a YouTube-for-microseries: Users can create their own series, upload their content and let viewers pay to watch — while keeping 70% of the revenue. The platform also allows creators to test out their show concept first, and also functions like a job board, where creators can use N1BW to build out a production team, including actors.
“Imagine trying to put together a team of 25-30 people, and having to negotiate a separate agreement with each one, and then having to find a place to monetize this content. It’s a high hurdle,” Price says. “On N1BW, if someone joins a project, then their participation is already figured out. It’s part of the basic agreement. So you’re the creator of the project. If you do nothing other than create it and attract the team, get everybody going, then you get 20% of the creative pool.”
Price argues that more and more content is going to be made this way as the traditional Hollywood structures keep disintegrating.”The idea of people producing their own projects, maybe collaborating with others, not going through some central organization to get approval, and then getting it out there into the world in a way that is economically profitable for them — I think that’s quite doable now with microseries and in the future, I imagine it’ll grow into other other media,” he says.
Price resigned from Amazon in 2017 following accusations of sexual harassment (which he has denied). He has kept a modest profile since his ouster. (He recently addressed the controversy behind his Amazon exit in a piece called, “Who Really Ought to be ‘Disgraced?'” for his Price Point newsletter on Substack, saying he, “told an awkward joke at a party once eleven years ago.”)
He moved to Hong Kong after leaving Amazon and founded a firm called International Art Machine, and more recently has penned op-eds for the New York Times about Hollywood, as well as written his Substack. (In March he wrote about the box office success of Amazon MGM’s “Project Hail Mary” for the Times.)
“I made no attempt to try to stay relevant. I spent half the time in Hong Kong. That was not really a goal. But, inevitably, my thoughts returned to the future of showbiz, since that’s always been my thing,” he tells us. “I would say people shouldn’t worry about trying to be relevant. Like if you’re innovating and doing interesting things, then you’re relevant by definition.”
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