I've been absent from this blog for a long time, as life gets in the way. I'm sure you can identify.
Anyway, Filmhub worked out okay for us--the fact that most of my movies made their budgets back elsewhere meant Filmhub was just sort of additional money. There were up and down months, but now everything's settled quite a bit, even Tubi.
Tubi used to pay quite decent, but our numbers have fallen way off. I'm not sure how much is because our viewership is down or whether the Fox buyout has affected how much we're being paid.
Anyway, that's not the main point of this post. The main point is this:
Couple of months ago I noticed my movies were on a Roku channel called Fawesome Horror. I went and looked at everyone who has licensed my movies--and the channels they claim to represent--and there was no Fawesome horror.
I reached out to Future Today(who owns Fawesome), who told me they got my titles via UDU Digital. (someone who HAD licensed my titles). I reached out to Filmhub to see if they were aware of this. They said UDU was not allowed to do this, as Filmhub had just reached an agreement with Future Today to license to them.
I pulled all my titles from UDU. I warned Filmhub that this kind of behavior by their licensors was VERY concerning. If the licensors aren't telling Filmhub where they're streaming our movies, it would be very easy to hide money from those places.
Not that Filmhub seems interested in auditing anyone, which we'll circle back to in a moment.
Last week I saw another channel being pimped on Roku. The FreeTV Club Channel. I do a quick search, and a couple of my movies are on there. I repeat my licensor check, and nope, nobody lists this as an outlet for their company.
I look to the Developer on Roku, but they are only identified as "Developer 447529083915". That's not a good sign. They don't even put a company name? Seems shady.
I contact Filmhub, who tells me that no one they deal with supplies titles to FreeTV Club.
I go into FreeTV Club's TOS and find the company says they're owned by a Chinese company called Tiny Kernel Ltd. There's an email, so I email them to find out who they licensed my titles through. I tell them that if they don't reply back within 7 business days, I'll file a copyright claim through Roku to get their channel taken down.
If you're a filmmaker, I'd urge you to go see if your movies are on either of these channels, and if so, report them to Filmhub and Roku. It looks like it's actually going to come to litigation, as Fawesome is STILL playing my titles well over a month after being informed they're violating my copyright.
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FILMHUB: GOING DOWNHILL FAST
After the whole Fawesome thing, which I posted about on the FB Protect Yourself... group, I got an email from a producer group who was interested in hearing about my experience with Filmhub. They had heard some disturbing things about them.
I got a conference call with them. One of them was in the UK, another in Los Angeles. I told them my issues, and they said they'd heard the same. They said that it appeared that Filmhub wasn't interested in audting or trying to keep honest any of the licensors they deal with.
Basically, Company X can license your title with nearly no vetting, and then just pay Filmhub whatever they want a month. Filmhub doesn't make them prove anything or account for how often they're streaming your film.
I started deep diving on some of the stats--UDU, who has had some of my movies since December of 2021 has paid me a grand total of...wait for it...$28.
They claim to operate 8 channels, and they're making me on average $1.25 a month?
Some other channels appear to be the same. Some haven't even paid me a dime, and have had my movies for 8 months to a year.
This is no longer a recipe for success for the filmmaker. It appears Filmhub's strategy is to license as many movies to as many places as possible, hoping for whatever money they can get. There is no oversight. No one is vetting these companies. No one is auditing at all.
I've now told Filmhub to stop licensing any of my titles unless they clear it with me first. I told them that if that was too much trouble, just stop licensing them to any new places. I also told them to pull my titles from quite a few of the companies that weren't paying.
I'd urge any filmmakers using Filmhub to take a good look at some of these channels on Roku and see if their movies have been licensed, and to stop Filmhub from licensing to just ANY channel. UDU is pretty clearly a scam company--I'm positive there is a TOS for Filmhub that says these companies can't license material from Filmhub to third parties, but that's just what they did when they licensed my movies to Future Today, without letting Filmhub know.
If we find enough filmmakers that this has happened to, perhaps it will be time for a class-action lawsuit against these companies...
