The billionaire’s sister owns the Passionflix platform, which organizes erotic novels and fan fiction based on a “naughty thermometer”
Tosca Muschio he is not personally interested in space tourism or the production of electric cars. He is no troublemaker on Twitter, a platform that has now been bought by his brother. And he is not swimming in money, at least not in the money of the richest person in the world.
However, she is similar to Elon Musk, her older brother, in at least one thing: She is determined to turn an idea that could easily be fooled into a successful business. To hell with the prophets of doom, your project predicts romance.
Tosca Muschio47 years old, is the force behind the passion, a new subscription streaming service dedicated to adaptations of commercial novels and erotic fanfiction into movies and series. The online service costs $ 6 per month and organizes content from one “bad thermometerThe categories are “So conventional”, “Slightly exciting”, “Passion and romance”, “Embarrassing spicy sweets” and “I can’t see it at work”. Passionflix raised nearly $ 22 million in initial funding.
“We’re looking for five more, maybe 10 (millions) “, Tosca said.” Do you know anyone who might be interested? “
In addition to the adaptations – the vast majority directed by Tosca, who is the company’s CEO – Passionflix offers a rotating assortment of licensed material. Options include “Random Encounters,” a 2013 film starring the Duchess of Sussex, then known as Meghan Markle, and “Two Nights Only,” a 2014 romantic comedy starring Miles Teller. Also available are studio films such as “Sabrina” and “The English Patient”, both from the 1990s.
Passionflix is kind of a sexy Hallmark channel. The stories are simple and the acting is sometimes unsophisticated. The dialogue displayed on Passionflix is often drawn directly from the source material, which can be majestically mundane. “I missed making love to you,” whispers a shirtless muscular man in “Gabriel’s Rapture,” a Passionflix series based on the bestselling novel by Sylvain Reynard. “It was like one of my limbs was missing.”
But please, don’t call Passionflix guilty pleasure. “I hate that description,” Tosca said in her direct way. “It’s just a pleasure.” And get the dirty thoughts out of your head: fluffy thermometer aside, Passionflix content it rarely comes close to the soft-porn threshold. There are sex scenes, sure, but the sensuality is often muted: a seductive gaze here, a thigh massaging there. Tosca imposes a rule of frontal non-nudity below the waist.
“Most of the time, people despise romance – apparently there’s something radical about having female desire as the main theme – and they don’t think it’s intellectual enough,” Tosca said. “I think it’s wrong. Romance is about validating emotions. It’s about taking the shame out of sexuality. These are uplifting stories.”
“Nothing we do is about being a victim, or a woman in danger, or the domestication of women,” she continued. “Whether it’s a second chance or the Cinderella story, in the end it’s two people who connect, communicate and engage.”
Passionflix launched in September 2017 and is now available in 150 countries; the content is subtitled in nine languages. But progress has been slow. The streaming service only has six employees. The pandemic has paralyzed production for a while. The number of subscribers is a mysteryand Tosca refuses to give details and analysts say the service is still too small to monitor. (Subscriptions grew 73% in 2021 from the previous year, a Passionflix spokesperson said.)
Also, the streaming gold rush is losing steam. At the very least, it’s getting harder to break through. “The current streaming services market is turbulent, with major streaming services spending millions to attract consumer attention and niche services don’t have that kind of budget,” said Brett Sappington of Interpret, a media consultancy.
“Niche services are often at the mercy of aggregators such as smart TVs, streaming boxes or online platforms,” Sappington continued. “They have little bargaining power for revenue sharing; they are often the last in line for developer support; and they often can’t afford to have the top spots on websites or app stores.”
More than 300 streaming services are available in the United States, according to consulting firm Parks Associates. The top eight accounted for about 88% of demand for original content from January through March, according to Parrot Analytics. Niche services struggle to find balance, such as Revry, which focuses on content for the LGBT + community; Bloody Disgusting, for horror fans; kweliTV, dedicated to black culture; and little Passionflix.
But Tosca doesn’t seem about to give up.
“It’s not in my genes,” he said, smiling broadly. “Our family motto could be: keep trying, keep trying, keep trying”.
Elon Musk, of course, is the founder of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla and the richest person on the planet; He struck a $ 44 billion deal in April to buy Twitter. Tosca Musk’s other older brother, Kimbal Musk, is a restaurant entrepreneur and no-middle food activist, and sits on the boards of SpaceX and Tesla. Their mother, Maye Musk, is a model who recently published the memoir “A Woman Makes a Plan”. (For a while, Maye Musk ran the Passionflix Instagram account.)
Tosca Musk has described the typical Passionflix subscriber as “voraciously engaged” with the site, and perhaps it’s an understatement if Jan Edwards is their point of contact. She was widowed in 2015 and retired from her HR job in January. Jan, 65, lives in Tuckerton, New Jersey, and has been a Passionflix subscriber since 2018. “I’m just putting clothes in the dryer – it’s a lively day around here, I have to say – so it’s a good time to talk.” he told her when he called a reporter.
Why do you subscribe to the service? “Oh, that’s easy to answer,” she said. “Most of the time, I get ignored by the rest of the services.”
Jan said she became addicted to romantic fiction in 2009 when a friend “provoked” her to read the sadomasochistic romance “Fifty Shades of Gray”. It was the equivalent of a drug entry into the literary genre: Jan now reads up to three novels a week.
“People despise romance, but it makes me feel good – and a lot of women agree, even if they don’t usually talk,” she said.
It’s not just women: Romance Writers of America, a group of US writers, estimates that 18% of novel readers are male. Thousands of new romantic titles appear every year. According to NPD BookScan, around 48 million copies were sold in 2021, including e-books, up 10% from the previous year.
Early Passionflix supporters included TV producer Norman Lear and his wife, Lyn, who is also a producer; Jason Calacanis, internet entrepreneur and angel investor; and Kimbal Musk.
And Elon Musk?
“It is difficult for me to answer this question,” said Tosca Musk. “If I say he’s an investor, then everyone will say, ‘Oh, he made her brother pay for it.’ And if I say he doesn’t invest, then everyone will say, ‘He doesn’t support her.’
First Look Media is the largest investor in the passion, although the group’s CEO, Michael Bloom, declined to disclose the extent of his stake. (Tosca Musk remains the majority owner of Passionflix.)
First Look, founded by Pierre Omidyar, the eBay billionaire, is made up of several unrelated entities. There is a non-profit arm focused on investigative journalism and documentaries. An entertainment studio, Topic, specializes in prestigious films such as “Spencer”, “Spotlight: Secrets Revealed” and “The Mauritanian”. A relatively new department hosts niche streaming services, including crime-focused Topic.com and Passionflix.
“We fully understand that we are walking by the foot of the elephants,” Bloom said, referring to streaming services for all audiences such as HBO Max and Netflix. “But we’re not trying to be them. There is an opportunity for specialized services like Passionflix to cater to a specific audience in a way that big mainstream services don’t.”
History
Romantic escapism was an important element on television. It was boosted by the miniseries (“Wounded Birds”, “Light, Camera, Illusion”) in the 80s and the movie of the week in the 90s (all those Danielle Steel adaptations). But television networks largely abandoned these formats in the 2000s. Cost was one of the reasons; they have also begun to favor repeat crime serials and reality shows, including the “Bachelor” franchise, which is based on the idea of romance.
In the past decade, only a small number of novel adaptations have made it to television. Even fewer of them (“Outlander” on Starz, “Bridgerton” on Netflix) have been successful.
Passionflix wasn’t meant to be a questionable way to profit from boom streaming, Tosca said. In fact, she and two friends, Jina Panebianco and Joany Kane, wanted to do a romantic love story for television, but couldn’t find anyone interested in Hollywood.
“So we had to create a distribution solution,” said Tosca.
Tosca, named after Puccini’s opera, studied film at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. After graduating in 1997, she worked at Alliance, a Canadian production company, before moving to Los Angeles, where she directed, wrote and produced the film “Puzzled” (2001), with support from Elon Musk. Eventually, she began producing and directing TV movies for channels such as Hallmark, Lifetime, and ION Television.
But she was frustrated. “I was constantly in conflict with TV executives who were not interested in stories with emancipated women who embraced their sexuality.”
Who is Tosca Musk?
Tosca speaks at a dizzying pace and with an accent that reflects her time in Canada, the United States and South Africa, where she grew up. She is tall, energetic and outspoken. At the beginning of an interview with the Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey near Los Angeles International Airport last month, she announced that her daughter, Isabeau, 9, was in a nearby room playing video games and that she had conceived. her daughter and her twin brother, Grayson, through an anonymous sperm donor and in vitro fertilization.
Tosca moved to Georgia during the pandemic to take advantage of the state’s generous tax breaks for film and television production. She had taken over much of the Ritz-Carlton for an inaugural Passionflix fan convention: the PassionCon.
Packages for two cost $ 1,000 and included accommodation for two nights, meals, booze, hair and makeup, panels with Passionflix stars and a sleepover for the third season premiere of “Driven,” a series about a woman with a heart. of gold who falls in love with a bad boy racing driver. About 200 people attended, Tosca said, some from Australia and Germany. (Yes, she was wearing pajamas.)
“It was like a dream,” said Jan, who is from New Jersey. “This community is really important to me.”
Finding ways to take Passionflix’s business beyond the screen is a new challenge for Tosca. He also used PassionCon to introduce Passionflix-branded wine. The bottles cost $ 35 and carry the slogan: “Embarrassing Spiced Delights.” / TRANSLATION OF ROMINA CACIA
Source: Terra
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
