Watch Joey Graceffa bring YouTubers together for 'a dinner party to die for'
Reporter's note: This is part of an ongoing series featuring each new original show or movie debuting on YouTube Red. The subscription streaming service's first slate of originals launched in February.
LOS ANGELES -- Joey Graceffa always thought it could be fun to throw a murder mystery party for his friends and secretly film it.
So when YouTube asked the influencer -- who has 6.2 million subscribers to his channel -- to pitch ideas for an original series, he wrote "murder mystery party" down on a long list of potential concepts.
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Turns out, that was the idea YouTube liked the most -- and about one year later, Escape the Night is ready to make its debut. Mashable got an exclusive clip of the series (above).
The new show, which launches Wednesday on YouTube Red, brings Graceffa and a handful of digital stars -- including GloZell, iJustine, Lele Pons, Shane Dawson, Eva Gutowski, Andrea Brooks, Timothy DeLaGhetto, Matt Haag, Oli White and Sierra Furtado -- together for a Murder Mystery experience.
The 10 guests were invited from "the modern world" to attend a dinner at a mansion, which has been locked in the 1920s. The show's tagline: "This is a dinner party to die for. No one is safe."
"It was a really fun concept to put together," Graceffa said. "And it was an idea that started small and ended up into something much bigger."
Brian Graden Media, behind projects like Pivot's HitRecord, also immediately jumped at the opportunity to help produce.
"It was a hybrid between scripted mystery and reality elimination show," Graden told Mashable. "I thought that was really imaginative premise for a series."
Graden -- who served as president of entertainment at MTV Networks Music Channels for 13 years and president of logo until December 2009 -- is no stranger to working with YouTube talent.
His company also made Todrick Hall's MTV show Todrick.
"Working with YouTube Red feels like you are part of pioneering a frontier," he said. "We were really conscious of making Joey's show something premium, something special that viewers want access too as opposed to what they'd see day to day for free on a YouTube channel."
For the YouTubers, being part of the series was like playing dress up with friends.
"It was fun because I know these people and I love these people," GloZell told Mashable. "And we got to play ourselves in another time. It’s going to be great for fans to see us look different."
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Saba was a Los Angeles-based reporter who covers all things digital entertainment, including YouTube, streaming services and digital influencers. Prior to that, she spent two years at the Los Angeles Times covering entertainment for the Calendar and Company Town sections. Saba grew up in Santa Monica and graduated from Boston University with a B.S. in journalism and B.A. in political science. When not reporting, she is usually binge watching shows online or looking for new coffee shops to frequent.
