Roku Rescues Cancelled Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, Ordering Holiday Movie

Another canceled NBC show has been rescued by a streamer. Roku is ordering a two-hour movie continuing the story of the musical drama Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, marking the platform's first greenlit film for The Roku Channel beyond the Quibi library it acquired last January. The connected TV company will bring back the original cast in a two-hour movie, Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas, becoming The Roku Channel's first Roku Original film. The Roku Channel is also adding all 25 episodes of the NBC series later this fall. "This is such a unique piece of content ripe for the holiday season, with an incredibly passionate and loyal fan base," Colin Davis, Roku's head of original scripted programming, told Adweek. "The way that we are designing this movie and launching it is that it's an encore for that loyal audience who watched those first two seasons and they get this holiday gift of this movie." Roku Changes the AVOD Game by Turning Quibi’s Lemons Into Lemonade NBC cancelled the series in June after two seasons, and negotiations to move the show to NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock did not come to fruition. Enter Roku, which commissioned Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas—a movie that Davis sees as an "encore" to Zoey's NBC run. The film, which starts production this month, will serve as a wrap-up for Season 2's cliffhanger finale, picking up where that episode left off. There's no word yet on if Roku will pick up the series for a third season. For now, Davis said the platform is currently focused only on the movie. Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist first premiered on NBC in 2020 and earned five Emmy nominations. After NBC announced the cancellation, fans took to social media to launch the #savezoeysplaylist campaign. It's the second series canceled by NBC this year to find new life on a streaming platform. Last week, Netflix picked up Manifest for a fourth and final season, two months after NBC had pulled the plug on the drama. 'Tailor made for a streaming audience' Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas' script is written so that it "naturally fits" ad breaks. "This film is tailor made for a streaming audience and it fits our AVOD mosaic," said Davis. "The ad breaks will create an even better experience." While the film serves as a standalone piece of content, Roku believes it can also serve as a new entry point into The Roku Channel for prior fans of the show. "We're going to bring in new audiences and have the existing audience," said Davis. "The data shows us that it's going to do well for our existing audience but also has the ability to bring in a new audience. It's really important as we get into originals that we think about who is already there, and making sure that we give them something incredible and satiating but also who we can bring in." The Zoey's movie is the latest bold move from Roku as the connected TV platform dives into original content. The company debuted 23 more former Quibi series in August under its Originals banner, including four that had never been seen before. That release made up the second wave of Roku Originals following the May launch. "This is just a continuation of our test and learn strategy, a real opportunity that we saw and wanted to take advantage of. This is a natural evolution for companies as they get into originals," said Davis, pointing to Netflix's resurrection of Fox's Arrested Development and Hulu's rescue of The Mindy Project, also from Fox. "This is something that has happened in the past and just really made a lot of sense for us to do." The further push into original content comes as Nielsen began including The Roku Channel in its CTV rankings for the first time. In the month of June, the AVOD was the sixth most streamed channel by household reach, behind Netflix at No. 1, followed by YouTube, Amazon, Hulu and Disney+. The Roku Channel currently reaches households with approximately 70 million people and more than doubled its streaming hours year-over-year.