Tyler Oakley will join forces with entertainment powerhouse Ellen DeGeneres in a development deal for her own video platform.
Ellen Digital Ventures (aka EDV) announced its first ever programming slate in an unofficial NewFronts event in New York. While there’s not much concrete information on Oakley’s particular project, he’s a been a huge fan of DeGeneres for a while, calling his 2015 appearance on his show “a benchmark” of his career in a year-end interview the Daily Dot.
“Ellen got it because she is doing it too,” said Oakley of DeGeneres’s digital success onstage at Variety’s Tech and Entertainment summit in New York. DeGeneres is the reigning talk show host on YouTube with 15 million subscribers (Jimmy Fallon only has 10 million), and her programming slate will focus on projects that her fans are familiar with from her syndicated talk show. Epic or Fail, a popular show segment, will get its own treatment, where contestants guess the end of a viral video.
Other programming will include a Damn Daniel series for Snapchat, an animated series on Portia de Rossi’s pets, a dancing show featuring So You Think You Can Dance alum Stephen “tWitch” Boss, and a series about 4-year-old wiz kid Brielle, a frequent guest. The network will also feature user-generated content under the banner #MadeByYou.
“I’m so excited for the Ellen Digital Network,” said DeGeneres in the press announcement. “I’ll get to showcase amazing talents like Tyler Oakley and tWitch. Plus, I’ll finally prove to the world that my pets can speak in human voices.”
There are no set dates for any series launches at this time.