Crypt TV

**Crypt TV** is an entertainment company founded by Jack Davis and Eli Roth in 2015 and backed by Jason Blum and Blumhouse Productions. It is focused on developing, producing and distributing horror themed digital content, with an emphasis on monsters and recurring characters in linked universes.

They are best known for viral characters such as The Birch and The Look-See, Crypt specializes in short-form horror videos made for the internet. The company has garnered a combined social media following of five million likes on Facebook and more than three million subscribers on YouTube.

## History

Jack Davis, who was attending Duke University at the time, met Eli Roth at a dinner party in 2013. The pair kept in touch, discussing how to make scary entertainment effective on phone screens. Crypt TV was formed when Davis and Roth launched a "six-second scare" contest together in October 2014, as "a way to test to see if you could really make great scary content in short form on mobile,” according to Davis. The contest was featured on *Good Morning America* and subsequently went viral, receiving over 15,000 submissions. Roth showed the contest to Jason Blum, who was looking for a digital strategy for Blumhouse Productions, and Blum became Crypt's first investor. The company was officially launched in April 2015 in Los Angeles with just three employees: Davis, Darren Brandl as Chief Operating Officer, and Kate Krantz as Chief Content Officer.

In March 2017, Crypt TV raised $3.5 million in funding, led by venture capital fund Lerer Hippeau Ventures, a backer of Buzzfeed. The company has raised $6.2 million from past investors.

## Content and Distribution

Crypt releases about 100 videos every three months, building its audience through Facebook and YouTube and averaging more than 100 million online views a month. Using real-time reactions on social media to test characters and concepts, the most well-received characters are inducted into the "Crypt Monster Universe", who then form the basis for as many as fifteen videos in a quarter. Giggles the Clown, The Look-See, and Sunny Family Cult are among the most popular series developed this way.

Crypt's viral characters expand beyond traditional narrative videos; Giggles the Clown does live streaming interviews with fans, engaging on social media as a typical influencer would, and she has appeared as an attraction at Knott's Scary Farm. The channel also has a merchandising deal with Spencer's Gifts, which sells merchandise for Giggles, The Birch, and Sunny Family Cult.

In September 2018, Crypt TV announced that they had partnered with Facebook Watch to produce and release a fifteen-episode series about The Birch, one of their most popular IPs, which was released exclusively on the streaming site on October 19, 2019. In July 2019, it was announced *The Birch* was the first part of a five-series deal between Crypt and Facebook Watch, with each series receiving a ten-episode season. *Stereoscope* and *Kinderfänger* premiered in August and October 2020, and the remaining two series, *Mira Mira* and *Woman in the Book*, premiered in January and June 2021.

In April 2021, it was announced that Crypt had struck a deal with the NBC streaming site Peacock to produce an eight-episode series based on another of Crypt's more recent IPs, *The Girl in the Woods.* The series premiered exclusively on Peacock in October 2021, featuring Krysten Ritter (*Jessica Jones*) as director for the first four episodes.

In May 2021, Crypt TV licenses made their first appearance in a video game, with three characters appearing as third-party downloadable content skins in the game *Dead by Daylight* by Behaviour Interactive.

## External Links

* Official website
* YouTube channel
* Facebook page
* Instagram
* Twitter

## References

1. ↑ http://www.adweek.com/digital/meet-the-horror-aficionado-who-wants-to-scare-you-on-your-phone/
2. ↑ https://deadline.com/2019/07/crypt-tv-facebook-watch-new-series-deal-1202649170/
3. ↑ https://deadline.com/2019/07/crypt-tv-facebook-watch-new-series-deal-1202649170/
4. ↑ https://deadline.com/2021/04/girl-in-the-woods-peacock-ya-supernatural-drama-crypt-tv-krysten-ritter-1234746193/
5. ↑ https://gamerant.com/dead-by-daylight-crypt-tv-collection/