Kenya Barris Teams Up With Revolt To Launch Revolt Labs

Black-ish creator Kenya Barris has a new idea to spotlight creators and is teaming up with Revolt’s parent company, OffScript Worldwide, to bring the idea to life. Barris will serve as vice chair of the new imprint, dubbed Revolt Labs.

Revolt/Offscript Worldwide CEO Detavio Samuels —and former iOne Digital president— spoke to Variety to break down the intricacies of Revolt Labs. The age of empowering independent creators takes center stage, and Barris is ready to prime them.

“On the Revolt side, we’ve proven ourselves from a business standpoint as the fastest-growing Black-owned media company,” Samuels began. “We have a track record identifying the next generation of creators. Then being able to take those creators to Kenya, who makes the dopest content and can take things from raw ideas to real concepts to global franchises. And then the third piece is our marketing prowess — whether we are driving them to the Revolt distribution system to out to Netflix, Disney or whoever buys it.”

Social media has removed the need for big backing, as individual audiences have become king for creators like Druski, Kai Cenat, and iShowSpeed. And Samuels believes that with the backing of a larger company like Revolt Labs, they can showcase their ideas to an ever larger audience.

“Creators have massive audiences, and tremendous influence,” Samuels said. “But what they’re missing is the infrastructure to turn some of their biggest ideas into premium IP. We know they’re dominating in places like social, but when we talk to them, so many of them have dreams that go way beyond that. Bigger budgets, broader distribution, a different economic model than what they’re seeing in social.”

Barris is an entertainment vet and sees the changing landscape of programming and thinks the new company will ensure he’s at the forefront, steering it.

“You’re starting to see the young creators like Kai and Druski, and the power that they have. They have ideas, we can see language changing, fashion changing. Revolt has always been there on the edge of where the culture is. So when the idea of Revolt Labs came up, I was like, this is the right time… I just want to make sh-t. And if I don’t make sh-t, I want to help other people make sh-t.”

The change comes as Revolt rose from the post-Diddy era, in which Diddy founded the company but later divested as he became more deeply embroiled in legal issues.

Navigating those challenges only makes Barris more confident that he and Samuels are the right team to take on this growth opportunity together.