EPIX Widens Its Reach and Builds Its Brand With ‘Perpetual Grace LTD’

There’s a repeating Ben Kingsley riff in Perpetual Grace, LTD — “Get it. Get the rhythm. There we go. There we fucking go.” — that’s been stuck in my head for weeks like a Taylor Swift hook. EPIX even put it in the marketing campaign. The mantra appears midway through the first episode in a bizarre exercise montage and has popped up a few more times through the first half of the 10-episode season. When you see it — on YouTube, Twitter or in the show itself — you’ll remember it.

“Original programming is the great leveler,” Wright said. “As many choices as there are out there, one show can still make a difference. If you manage to find that show — which is almost always a combination of great talent, a relevant idea and a thoughtful approach to production — you can grow the relevance of a smaller platform very quickly.”

More than 500 scripted shows will air on U.S. broadcast, cable, premium and streaming this year, and they’re coming at you from everywhere. Besides the usual billboards, TV ads and late-night guests, shows are marketing with sponsored posts on Twitter and Instagram, creators and talent are on podcasts, Decider and other entertainment outlets publish recommendations lists, and TV platforms and streamers have carousels and rows of “Trending” and “Because you watched Fleabag” recommendations.

On Perpetual Grace, LTD, the discovery process started in development and casting. The creative team and much of the supporting cast come from Patriot, a critical hit on Amazon’s Prime Video where EPIX is now available as an add-on service. One lead (Jimmi Simpson) co-starred on Westworld, a popular hit on HBO, which is available on almost all of the same TV platforms as Epix. Another (Luis Guzman) is an indie darling who spent a season on Netflix’s Narcos. If you’ve watched Patriot or Westworld or Narcos, your TV platform will eventually nudge you toward Perpetual Grace.

Franchises are another way EPIX is cutting through the noise. The service includes a big catalog of Tom Cruise films including the entire Mission: Impossible franchise and the John Krasinski hit A Quiet Place that has a sequel in production. EPIX will premiere the DC Comics series Pennyworth on July 28 and just ordered a third season of Get Shorty starring Ray Romano and Chris O’Dowd that’s based on the Elmore Leonard novel.

Netflix, HBO, Showtime, Starz, Hulu and Amazon are all growing services that will make more original shows in 2019 than they did in 2018. Apple, Disney, WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal all have shows in production for services that will launch over the next year. How does EPIX, with its comparably small slate of five scripted originals, compete with that?

“There are thousands of movies in EPIX’s library, so people who subscribe are going to be surprised by how much is there,” Wright said. “On the originals side, it’s clearly about developing something special and making sure people know where to see it.”

At a time when the major film studios are clawing back much of their film catalogs from Netflix and Amazon to stock their own streaming services, EPIX has a stable catalog of more than 2,000 films, including titles from owner MGM’s extensive catalog and new films that EPIX licenses in the traditional pay-cable window.

HBO, Showtime and Starz have grown their U.S. subscriber numbers over the last few years even as traditional cable and satellite services have lost millions of subscribers — including premium-cable subscribers — during that time because those premium channels are now, essentially, streaming services. EPIX is later to the party but is now at least at the party.

Amazon’s Prime Video Channels and more recently Roku Channels and Apple TV Channels have given those premium channels a collective scale that none of them have individually. Media analyst Rich Greenfield has likened this aggregation to penguins “huddling up to get warm in a pack so large so that they can withstand the harshness of winter and survive a little bit longer.” The approach is also helping upstart streamers like CuriosityStream, which is available on most TV platforms and hit 1 million subscribers earlier this year.

EPIX’s availability across TV platforms should help the service grow from a reported 15 million U.S. subscribers — EPIX doesn’t disclose its numbers — as consumers who become aware of EPIX originals on TV platforms, on social media, and in the entertainment press will be able to subscribe to the service on their preferred TV platform.

“One of our major initiatives over the last year has been to make EPIX ubiquitous, and we’re on track to do that,” Wright said. “Since I started at EPIX, we’ve gone from being available in 40 million homes to being available in 120 million homes. “The story of 2019 for EPIX is growth — availability growth and content growth.”

Scott Porch writes about the TV business for Decider and is a contributing writer for Playboy. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.