You know that feeling of panic when your phone’s battery is at 1% and there is no charger sight? Well, imagine that feeling and you’re trapped in the snow. That is exactly the level of anxiety that Tye Sheridan is feeling in the new trailer for the Quibi thriller 

created by Zach Wechter and Jack Seidman and executive produced by Steven Soderbergh.

In the new series, Sheridan plays a college student Andy Braddock who is heading to a New Years Eve party to try and win back the heart of his ex-girlfriend. While traveling through the Colorado mountains, his car hurtles into a ravine. He ends up stranded, wounded and has nothing but a dying cell phone as a lifeline.

True to Quibi’s innovative technology in “turnstile” storytelling, 

 blends two narratives simultaneously. When you watch the series horizontally, you get a cinematic view and once you twist your phone vertically, you see Andy’s phone as your own. Footage of 

 also features Lukas Gage, Francesca Reale, Mace Coronel, Sydney Park, Andie MacDowell and Eric Dane. Wechter, who co-wrote the series with Seidman, also directs. Seidman and Wechter also serve as Executive Producers alongside Soderbergh, Michael Sugar, Cathy Konrad (Treeline Film), Danny Sherman (Thruline Entertainment), Ben Silverman, Howard Owens, Rodney Ferrell, and Greg Lipstone (Propagate). Producers are Christian Heuer (Alpen Pictures), Isabel San Vargas (Propagate), Mike Glasz (Pickpocket). Matt Pittman is Co-Producer: Matt Pittman (Pickpocket).

‘Wireless’ Trailer: Steven Soderbergh’s Quibi Thriller Finds Tye Sheridan Fighting For Survival

iHeartMedia and Emmy Award-winning, multiplatform host Dan Patrick have announced a partnership to launch The Dan Patrick Podcast Network. The agreement includes a slate of iHeartRadio original podcasts that will be co-produced by Patrick, iHeartRadio and Workhouse Media.

"Who doesn't love a great story!" said Patrick. "I love that I can introduce great storytellers through my partnership with iHeartRadio. Conal Byrne and his team have been outstanding in helping us pull together our launch slate of podcasts in sports and entertainment. I'm also thrilled that one of them, ‘The Battle for L.A,' is already partnered for television and film with first-in-class, Oscar-winning Michael Sugar and his phenomenal team at Sugar23. I promise nobody is going to be bored with these shows."

"At Sugar23, we pride ourselves on telling impactful stories, and couldn't think of better partners to bring those stories to life than Dan and the incredible team at iHeartRadio," said Michael Sugar. "We're excited to be in business with these amazing creators, who will continue to bolster our ability to be storytellers in any medium."

"We couldn't be happier to work with a legendary broadcaster like Dan Patrick," said Conal Byrne, President of the iHeartPodcast Network. "iHeartRadio is dedicated to offering a wide variety of programing that connects with and engages audiences across all genres. This is an exciting partnership, and we look forward to introducing this new slate of podcasts with many more to come!"

Three new podcasts will launch soon as a part of the partnership:

"The Battle For LA" - from Joy Road Entertainment, "The Battle For L.A." tells the story of the birth of professional basketball in Los Angeles and how the city's two disparate franchises helped shape not just the NBA, but shifted the influence of sports and culture to the West Coast. The podcast will examine the personal and professional rivalries of those who played, coached and owned both the Lakers and Clippers and how it created a fanbase whose love of the game came to define their city. This project is currently being developed for television and film by Sugar23.

iHeartMedia, Dan Patrick and Sugar23 Partner for Podcast "Battle for LA" 

Events are being completely redefined during COVID-19, with the word “virtual” becoming the driving concept at a time when physical gatherings are not possible.

 to bring to market new virtual event technology. The companies tell Deadline they envision it having dramatic potential for brands, entertainment companies and consumers during the pandemic and beyond.

Details are being kept somewhat under wraps, but the companies cite the April concert by platinum-selling rapper Travis Scott held inside the videogame 

 as clear evidence of the evolution now under way. That show was hailed as a game-changing success because it broke through traditional media boundaries to create a new, native environment teeming with young audiences coveted by advertisers.

Sugar23 and Blue Revolver say their technology has some conceptual aspects in common with the Scott show, except they say it is more accessible to average consumers and has greater potency for concerts or in-store experiences. Through nothing more than a smartphone app, it brings multi-sensory moments into consumers’ homes without the need for 

Navigating this 2020 landscape, Michael Sugar’s Sugar23 has teamed up with experiential agency Blue Revolver to bring to market new virtual event technology. The companies tell Deadline they envision it having dramatic potential for brands, entertainment companies and consumers during the pandemic and beyond.

Michael Sugar’s Sugar23 Teams With Blue Revolver On Multi-Sensory Technology For Virtual Events

“Making a living is not as important as making a life… Putting people in harm’s way is not worth the money to me,” Sugar says

Michael Sugar cares. The veteran film and TV producer and financier truly seems to give a damn — about people, content and how his production company Sugar23 approaches both.

Sugar sat down to talk with TheWrap via phone a few days after June 19, colloquially known as Juneteenth or Freedom Day — the day commemorating the last of the enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learning they were free almost two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. This year, the day gained wide-spread recognition, and Sugar, like many other Hollywood bosses shut the office for the day in order to observe the day — but then went a step further.

“I didn’t want to just cancel school for the day. I instead organized a conversation with the whole company led by one of our African-American employees, who really walked us through why it was important to think about this as a day off,” Sugar said.

The Oscar-winning producer — Sugar’s 2015 film “Spotlight” won Best Picture — is a self-proclaimed sap and said he does his best to incorporate that care and humanity into how he runs his company and how his company approaches the work they do.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How are you are finding this time as the industry tries to figure out how to get back to work after, virtually, a complete shutdown?

 It’s been a real soul search for us as a company, and it’s been fruitful in many ways. I mean, first it was how do you get back to work? Now, it’s how do you get back to doing the kind of work that is cognizant and taking into account all of the change that’s taking place not only from the shutdown, which now seems inconsequential compared to the real pervasive issues of society right now. So it’s like, a hat on a hat on a hat. It’s not just how to get back, which was the first question for the last six months or however many months it is, but it’s now where are we getting back to?

I haven’t really been faced with the question: If I was greenlit tomorrow and sent somewhere, would I go? Would I take my family? What would that look like?… I’m not sure what the answer is.

It seems obvious things are going to change. Are you concerned or worried you might not be able to produce the same kind, or the same quality of content that you would have before?

Of course it’s a concern. But I don’t think that people, like our partners at Netflix or Apple or wherever — we work a lot of places — they’re not putting money into things that aren’t going to produce great content, right? I mean, they’re still being efficient with what they’re going to make. So I don’t think that there’s going to be a lot of sacrifice.

Where I feel that impact more is in the conversations we’re having with studios and financiers about what does a post-corona show or movie look like. It’s more about the questions like: How will audiences consume differently? And not just the disparity between Netflix and a movie theater, but the disparity between genre and what will get people to check out of life and engage with something? It’s added a layer of thinking to our curation of potential projects.

And how have you all been thinking about that question?

It’s impossible to analyze where the audiences are going, none of us even know where the world is going to be in six months. We live in an upside down world right now. But I do feel like the bar is higher because one consequence of corona, and there are many, is that people value their time more, even if they’ve had more free time, they value it more.

There probably couldn’t be a much better time to have multi-year long deal with a streamer like Netflix.

Working with Netflix, even in a time of complete normalcy is wonderful. They’re phenomenal partners to us. But in this time it’s even sweeter because their appetite to create more content couldn’t be bigger. What I love about Netflix is that when we talk to them their response always starts with how do we get to yes, rather than how can we say no. They don’t always say yes, but we always feel like they want to engage with our creativity in a way that is really embracing of us. That’s been the way from the jump, even before Corona.

I think what’s changed, obviously, is that they can’t make as much right now. But they, because there’s a deficit in production now, they’re preparing for a glut of it when we can. So our job is really shifted into development, and we are selling across all genres within film and TV. And we’ve got some phenomenal development coming in. So it hasn’t been less busy for us put it that way. We have been scrambling and working really hard, working with writers and filmmakers and talent to put things together so that when we can, we’re ready.

What’s the near future look like for Sugar23? Do current events change the way you all operate?

I personally hope so. I don’t know how soon we’re going to get back in [to production]. I hope soon. And we’re eager to do it. But I always say, making a living is not as important as making a life. And I apply that to all aspects of our business. Putting people in harm’s way is not worth the money to me.

So, it’s caused us to pivot in a myriad of ways. We’re focusing more on books, I shouldn’t say focusing more than film, but I’ve applied additional resources to our book business. We’ve applied a ton of resources to our podcast business because that can be done remotely. We’re doing venture capital and private equity. We’re investing in companies, and we’re particularly focused on the kinds of businesses that We can use our media and talent relationships to amplify. So as a business, Sugar23 is good. We have phenomenal investors that are supportive. We have a team that is pulling in the same direction. So I feel good about our company right now. We’re not from fear, we’re looking at this moment as an opportunity to grow, not to contract.

It’s strange every conversation I have and interview I do now focuses on the pandemic. Is there’s ever a point in time now where the pandemic hasn’t been a central thought for you?

Not every not every conversation is driven by the pandemic, but every conversation is informed by it… Obviously, what’s going on post-George Floyd has been a big distraction from the pandemic. That has certainly steered our conversations away from the pandemic. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about this, and how we can be advocates for the things that have emerged and the eyes that have been opened as a result of all this.

It’s evolving. I have to say, we have to do a much better job. We’ve had a number of conversations, and we’re trying to be careful and thoughtful about it because I didn’t just want to be reactive, right? So the weekend that everyone started protesting and everyone was blasting on social, I held back, not because I wasn’t connected to it, but because I really wanted to understand it better before I just jumped in on the bandwagon and put up something on social that may not have actually been our message. Because we were ill-informed. And so now we’re trying to be thoughtful rather than reactive.

Does that newfound awareness inform the kinds of projects you guys are attracted to,that you end up producing, whether they be podcasts or TV, film books?

The answer, of course, is yes. It informs that in myriad ways. It’s going to inform the marketplace because the buyers are thinking that way, so we need to think that way. But we already thought that way. I mean, the through line of our projects generally is that we try to disguise social impact with entertainment. I would say that 90% of our slate is about something important. Like “13 Reasons Why,” while it’s an adolescent soap opera, it’s obviously about deeper topics. “Maniac” was about mental health. And “Spotlight” was kind of on the nose but we tried to make it as a thriller — I mean on the nose in terms of its social impact.

So I think social impact has always been a part of our discussion. It would be tone deaf of us not to be thinking about how to tailor our slate to the new world and the new thinking, not because it’s opportunistic, but because it would be irresponsible not to as citizens. We care about the world here.

So to kind of circle back to the beginning of the conversation; how are you finding this time?

That’s the thing that I think is going to be the lasting impact of the pandemic. The small talk of the average Hollywood conversation is replaced by the real talk of how we’re experiencing corona — every conversation starts with: How you guys holding up?

We’ll get back to production, and people will get back to bars and life will return to normal, sort of, at some point. I think what’s different, and what I hope is different, is that everybody now knows that life can change in an instant. We hear it our whole lives, but you don’t believe it could actually happen to you and now it’s happened to us all. Life changed in an instant for everybody. My hope is that there will be a heightened sense of kindness in the world. Our business could use that too.

Latest

‘Wireless’ Trailer: Steven Soderbergh’s Quibi Thriller Finds Tye Sheridan Fighting For Survival

iHeartMedia, Dan Patrick and Sugar23 Partner for Podcast "Battle for LA"

Michael Sugar’s Sugar23 Teams With Blue Revolver On Multi-Sensory Technology For Virtual Events

Oscar-Winning Producer Michael Sugar on How to Elevate Storytelling During Social Change