Glitch Productions, the animation studio behind YouTube hit The Amazing Digital Circus, has scooped up another licensing deal.
Last September, Glitch–opened in 2017 by brothers Kevin and Luke Lerdwichagul—signed a deal with Netflix, giving the streamer permission to air new episodes of TADC. The unique thing about their deal? Glitch didn’t have to pull TADC off YouTube to make it a Netflix exclusive. In fact, new episodes would debut on YouTube and Netflix on the same day. Basically, Netflix serves as an extra distribution channel for the show, while getting to pad out its adult animation collection.
And now, Glitch has signed a similar deal with Amazon–not for The Amazing Digital Circus (as far as we know), but for several titles including Murder Drones, an eight-episode series Glitch published on YouTube from 2021 to 2024.
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Similar in tone to TADC, Murder Drones follows Uzi Doorman, an angsty teenage worker robot whose existence is threatened when big bad extermination bots arrive on her planet. It was created, written, and directed by Liam Vickers, and produced by Glitch.
Just like with the Netflix x TADC deal, Glitch will keep Murder Drones on YouTube in full. It’s just that all eight episodes of the show are now also live on Prime Video.
The deal with Amazon is multi-title, but the duo haven’t announced which titles aside from Murder Drones are included.
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In a statement, the Lerdwichagul brothers said this deal allows them to keep “full creative control” over all their shows. Those shows, they added, will “always continue to be released” on YouTube–so it’s safe to bet that whatever future deals they manage to secure will similarly require streaming partners have non-exclusive rights.
“What this means is, we keep operating independently, doing what we’re doing, and Prime Video will give us the support necessary to do more for indie animation and creators than we could have previously,” the brothers said.
It’s interesting that Glitch has scooped up two of these non-exclusive deals. Netflix and Amazon don’t typically play in non-exclusive licensing (remember the Friends rights throwdown in 2018?), but it looks like they’re more lenient when the people they’re buying from have massive established presences on YouTube. Netflix has a non-exclusive licensing deal with CoComelon, too (at least for CoComelon‘s main program; Netflix has made some exclusive spinoffs), and while Amazon’s deal with MrBeast for his Beast Games show is exclusive, it’s an overall indicator that streamers consider content creators a pool of impressive talent worth poaching…no matter what Ted Sarandos says.
