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World of Wonder Productions is an American
production company
A production company, production house, production studio, or a production team is a studio that creates works in the fields of performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, comics, interactive arts, video games, websites, music, and ...
founded in 1991 by filmmakers Randy Barbato and
Portsmouth-born Fenton Bailey.
Based in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, the company specializes in
documentary television and film productions with a key focus on sexuality, erotica, and the sexual subculture. Together, Bailey and Barbato have produced programming through World of Wonder for
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
,
Bravo
Bravo(s) or The Bravo(s) may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music Groups and labels
*Bravo (band), a Russian rock band
* Bravo (Spanish group), represented Spain at Eurovision 1984
*Bravo Music, an American concert band music publishing company ...
,
HGTV
HGTV (an initialism for Home & Garden Television) is an American pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The network primarily broadcasts reality programming related to home improvement and real estate. As of February 2015, appr ...
,
Showtime
Showtime or Show Time may refer to:
Film
* ''Showtime'' (film), a 2002 American action/comedy film
* ''Showtime'' (video), a 1995 live concert video by Blur
Television Networks and channels
* Showtime Networks, a division of Paramount Global w ...
, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
,
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
, and
VH1 with credits including the ''
Million Dollar Listing
''Million Dollar Listing'' is an American reality television series franchise on the Bravo network. Each show chronicles the professional and personal lives of real estate agents based in a major American city as they sell high-end properties, givi ...
'' docuseries, ''
RuPaul's Drag Race
''RuPaul's Drag Race'' is an American reality competition television series, the first in the ''Drag Race'' franchise, produced by World of Wonder for Logo TV (season 1–8), WOW Presents Plus, VH1 (season 9–14) and, beginning with the f ...
'',
and the documentary films ''
Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures'' (2016)
and ''
The Eyes of Tammy Faye'' (2000).
World of Wonder is perhaps best known for its contributions towards
LGBTQ
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is a ...
programming, for which they won an
Outfest Annual Achievement Award in 2011. Their most well known LGBTQ production is ''RuPaul's Drag Race'', having managed the career of drag queen and titular host
RuPaul
RuPaul Andre Charles (born November 17, 1960; stylized as RuPaul) is an American drag queen, television personality, actor, musician, and model. Best known for producing, hosting, and judging the reality competition series ''RuPaul's Drag Race'' ...
for many years before this, eventually producing the franchise alongside the majority of its live shows, podcasts, television specials, and conventions.
History
Bailey and Barbato co-founded World of Wonder after meeting in NYU's graduate film program in the mid 1980s,
where they initially formed a disco pop rock duo called the Fabulous Pop Tarts under their record label, World of Wonder (with the name coming from a
British comic book Bailey used to get as a child). Bailey and Barbato began performing regularly at
Danceteria
Danceteria was a nightclub that operated in New York City from 1979 until 1986 and in the Hamptons until 1995. The club operated in various locations over the years, a total of three in New York City and four in the Hamptons. The most famous locat ...
and other clubs in downtown New York City.
[Pike, L (2006). "Channel XYZ: drag queens, club kids, and amateur erotic filmmakers make WOW TV the online outlet for artists on the edge", ''Los Angeles Magazine'', a]
archived on gcnext.com
retrieved April 4, 2009. They produced two albums, ''Age of the Thing'' which included their hit single ''New York City Beat'', and ''Gagging on the Lovely Extravaganza'', which included guest appearances by
Lady Miss Kier
Kierin Magenta Kirby (aka Lady Miss Kier) is an American singer, songwriter, DJ, designer, fashion icon, and activist.
During her career, Lady Miss Kier has been the vocalist for the band Deee-Lite, a disc jockey, and solo songwriter. She support ...
, RuPaul, Martyn Phillips, and Filthy the Dog.
World of Wonder initially acted as a management vehicle for the Fabulous Pop Tarts, organising projects in television production and licensing, documentary filmmaking, and the career expansion of their friends and fellow artists, particularly RuPaul, whom they met in Atlanta in the 1980s and have continued to work with.
They produced RuPaul's first album, "RuPaul is StarBooty", in 1986, and became his manager shortly after launching World of Wonder in 1991. They have since produced all of his television shows, his DragCon bi-coastal conventions and music productions, and have earned multiple Emmy Awards.
World of Wonder shares its name with one of its early television documentaries, ''Died on the 4th of July: Nelson Sullivan's World of Wonder''.
Nelson Sullivan
John Nelson Sullivan (March 15, 1948 – July 4, 1989) was an American videographer who chronicled life in Downtown Manhattan’s arts and club scene from 1983 until his death. His hundreds of videos documented daily life in the city, wild nigh ...
was a central figure in the downtown New York City art and club scene of the 1980s, obsessively videotaping everyone and everything he saw before dying of a heart attack on July 4, 1989. Sullivan left behind over 1200 hours of video footage taken over the last decade of his life.
From this archive, World of Wonder created a one-hour documentary portrait of Sullivan, which aired on UK's
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...
, and was also included on the DVD release of ''
Party Monster: The Shockumentary''.
Based, in part, on this documentary, Sullivan continued to gain posthumous respect as a noted historian, with his videos gaining a younger and wider viewership following their upload to YouTube.
The early focus on Sullivan formed the basis of the company's ongoing interest in documentary filmmaking. In 2014, Bailey and Barbato were honored with the IDA Pioneer Award, "celebrating exceptional achievement, leadership, and vision in the nonfiction and documentary community".
World of Wonder operates out of a historical
art-deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the United ...
building on
Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It begins in the east at Sunset Boulevard in the Los Feliz district and proceeds to the west as a major thoroughfare through Little Armenia and Thai Town, Hollywoo ...
. Designed by architects
S. Tilden Norton and
Fredrick H. Wallis and erected in 1930, the building served as the original home of the
Directors Guild of America
The Directors Guild of America (DGA) is an entertainment guild that represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry and abroad. Founded as the Screen Directors Guild in 1936, the group merge ...
. The World of Wonder Storefront Gallery now occupies the ground floor retail space, with production and management offices occupying the upper three stories. The basement, once home to the punk rock club
The Masque
The Masque was a small punk rock club in central Hollywood, Los Angeles, Hollywood, California which existed from 1977 to 1978. It is remembered as a key part of the early LA punk scene.
History
The Masque was founded by Scottish-American rock ...
, now houses the company's video archive and a soundstage.
Television
World of Wonder primarily produces television content for networks in the US and UK, including
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
,