Thursday, October 18, 2018

Hit LGBT Series "West 40s" Breaks 165K Views, Announces New Episodes

West 40s, the summer’s surprise-hit, indie comedy series about five gay men stumbling through their 40s in Hell’s Kitchen NYC, debuted on July 12th and, in just 3 months, has blown past 165K views on YouTube for its first episode.

Co-created by Comedy Central writer/producer and actor Mark Sam Rosenthal and by indie filmmaker Brian Sloan, this “Midtown, midlife comedy” following five characters in their 40s has struck a chord for LGBT audiences of all ages starved for true-to-life, relatable content online - and maybe even in general. With no advertising or promotional budget at all, West 40s’ great critical notices and even greater word-of-mouth have garnered the show nearly 13K subscribers on YouTube, and the pilot has been viewed in over 200 countries around the world.

The show’s unprecedented success out of the gate has led its thousands of fans to ask one question repeatedly in over 500 comments online: when is the next episode? Today, the West 40s team is announcing that they are starting work on Episodes 102 and 103. And, to fund the next round of production, they are launching a 67K Kickstarter for those two episodes, which will be shot together in January 2019 for release in March 2019.

“We have been thrilled and almost overwhelmed by the response to the show,” says Sloan in their Kickstarter video. “We even had to change our plan a bit due to the response and will now be shooting the next two episodes together in the new year.”

The pilot episode was produced independently after a successful Kickstarter campaign raised more than 23K, 190% above the original goal. So now to accommodate paying all the crew and making double the amount of content, they aim to raise 3x that amount to produce the next two episodes together.

“Originally, we were going to do one episode at a time but we decided to change our plan a bit due to the incredible response of the show’s fans,” said series co-star and co-creator Mark Sam Rosenthal. “They wanted more, and kept asking us online and in the YouTube LIVE videos that we were doing this fall. So we decided to give the people what they want!”