Yahoo News ‘Alan’s Universe’: How The Creator & Stars Of Hit YouTube Series Are Drawing 250M Viewers As Streamers & Cinemas Vie For Audiences – Crew Call Podcast
As studio and network executives rack their heads around what the under 25 demographic craves, multihyphenate creator and actor Alan Chikin Chow, who is behind the YouTube hit series Alan’s Universe, and his cast of Chelsea Sik, Michelle Park and Haven Everly have already figured it out.
As streaming services cannibalize their viewership and cinema ticket sales wane, this foursome have a gravitational pull across mobile phones with the teen comedy series Alan’s Universe which is a cross between Charlie Chaplin, Korean soaps and Riverdale. Chow plays the protag, an earnest guy with a huge heart, and lots of love to share with his fellow female classmates, but alas, teenagedom, mean girls (Chow even had a cameo in the recent Paramount feature reboot), and bullies get in the way. This week’s episode is titled “I Survived the World’s Most EVIL Teacher” while the previous week’s hijnks were “My girlfriend is PREGNANT AGAIN”. Scroll down for laughs.
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We talk to the four on this week’s Crew Call which you can listen to below:
The numbers speak for themselves: Alan’s Universe total channel viewership has a global reach of 39 billion and subscribers of 45M. Chow alone has 60M followers. The series during its entire run has clocked 250 million viewers with an average viewership watch per episode of 10 million. By the way, in regards to that latter stat, that’s double the audience who watched Dune: Part Two over opening weekend (5.2M admissions) and half that of the opening weekend domestic audience who watched Spider-Man: No Way Home in its first weekend (20M). Alan’s Universe is so successful it even had 94M TikTok sensation and singer Bella Poarch as a guest star.
Chow began making short-form content during his college days at USC. His parents at the time also moved away from their friends and family to a small town in West Virginia. To raise their hopes and spirits during the tough move, Chow made videos for them. Soon after he worked with digital creators and producers Lilly Singh, Ken Mok and Steven He, where his short-form platform began to blast off over the last three years. The creative director/co-writer of Alan’s Universe is Stepan Leptav, and the producer is Roman Tsuprik. Brands such as Netflix, Max (formerly HBO Max), McDonald’s, Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and Old Spice have reached out to team with Chow on partnerships and campaigns given his wattage. However, Alan’s Universe castmembers such as Park have also found branding opportunities, the actress creating a basketball spot for Procter & Gamble’s Always.
Apart from their work on Alan’s Universe, the foursome team together on various skits and bits whether it’s a full-costumed rendition of Inside Out (Hey, Disney marketing, get on this for the promotion of Inside Out 2), to Park’s VFX fueled Marvel-like creations to Everly’s musical performances with her mother, who was also a professionial singer over in the Philippines. Sik starred recently in the short film Foreign Planetary which won several film festival awards, while Park starred in the $64M-global grossing 2020 Chinese feature The Rescue. Everly has appeared on such shows as Netflix’s YOU, Showtime’s The L Word, and ABC’s The Rookie. She also recently dropped her music single “Raised By Wolves” on Spotify. Additional main cast in Alan’s Universe includes Nikolai “Kolunya” Spesivtsev, Katusha Tolstopyatova and Lena “Nitlenka” Nizh.
Disney marketing boss Asad Ayaz take note:
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