Alan’s Universe is expanding — to Netflix.
The biggest YouTube Shorts creator, Alan Chikin Chow, has a scripted series coming to Netflix, a key streaming competitor. The show, a collaboration with HYBE AMERICA, “will follow a misfit crew of aspiring pop idol rejects enrolled in an arts academy who come together to form a co-ed band,” per the synopsis.
HYBE America is the U.S. subsidiary of K-pop leader HYBE.
It’s a scripted series, but the music component will be very real. “The emerging artists who will star alongside Chow will release original music concurrently with the series,” the description continues. “With Chow’s content expertise and HYBE’s K-pop training, the music group will be well on its way to joining the ranks of KATSEYE and BTS.”
OK, so that might be a bit of a high bar, but if anyone can clear it, Chow has nearly 100 million followers on YouTube Shorts alone. His anthology series Alan’s Universe gets more than a billion views per month.
In addition to KATSEYE and BTS, HYBE houses SEVENTEEN, TXT, ENHYPEN, LE SSERAFIM, BOYNEXTDOOR, TWS and ILLIT, to name a few all-CAPS groups.
Chow will executive produce the series alongside James Shin, the president of film and television at HYBE AMERICA, and Jingu Jang, HYBE AMERICA AU president (and the former vice president of BIGHIT Music.) Chow will act, produce, showrun and direct the series.
“Our groundbreaking project brings together extraordinary creative talent across Netflix and HYBE AMERICA to launch a pioneering new franchise for the next generation,” Chow said in a statement. “Together with world-class teams who consistently shape culture on a global scale, our mission is to set a new standard for storytelling: designed to inspire creativity, spark joy, and impart timeless life lessons for audiences worldwide.”
The new franchise will be a “culture-defining model for how pop groups are created,” Shin added. “With a proven visionary like Alan, who is at the forefront of the creator ecosystem, we’re setting out to produce a groundbreaking series that expands audiences, possibilities, and how fandom is built from day one.”
Watch the series’ announcement in the below video — on YouTube, of course.
