''Sam Has 7 Friends'' was a 2006 series drama created, produced, and funded by the production company

Big Fantastic Big Fantastic, LLC is a filmmaking collective and production company located in Santa Monica, California which creates, develops and produces online video entertainment. The company is currently most known for their popular web series ''Sam Has 7 ...

and subsequently bought and distributed by the studio

Vuguru Vuguru is an American independent multi-platform studio founded by Michael Eisner's The Tornante Company in March 2006. The company has produced content including the web series ''Prom Queen'', '' The Booth at the End'', ''Little Women Big Cars'', ...

. The series appeared on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

Revver Revver (formerly ChangeTv) was an American video sharing website that hosted user-generated content. Until its shutdown in 2011,

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...

and its own web site. The show revolved around its tagline, "Samantha Breslow has seven friends. On December 15, 2006, one of them will kill her," with each episode bringing Sam one day closer to her death.

History

The series was created as an experiment by a group of young

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-based filmmakers – Douglas Cheney, Chris Hampel, Chris McCaleb, Ryan Wise, and producer Marqus Blakely – in their spare time. The project was on a budget of $50,000. Chris Hampel and Chris McCaleb were also working on

Michael Mann Michael Kenneth Mann (born February 5, 1943) is an American director, screenwriter, and producer of film and television who is best known for his distinctive style of crime drama. His most acclaimed works include the films ''Thief'' (1981), ' ...

's film ''

Miami Vice ''Miami Vice'' is an American crime drama television series created by Anthony Yerkovich and produced by Michael Mann (director), Michael Mann for NBC. The series stars Don Johnson as James "Sonny" Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo ...

'', Hampel as Mann's assistant, McCaleb as an assistant editor. The group formed a production company called

and set about creating a series of

webisode A webisode (portmanteau of "web" and "episode") is an episode of a series that is distributed as part of a web series or on streaming television. It is available as either for download or in streaming, as opposed to first airing on broadcast or c ...

s. The producers believed there was an untapped market for people with short attention spans, or office workers with only sporadic free time, who would watch a short-form scripted, serialized drama. The series was distributed for free on

Revver Revver (formerly ChangeTv) was an American video sharing website that hosted user-generated content. Until its shutdown in 2011,

and its own site, samhas7friends.com. The series was produced with no business model, and only minimal support from advertising via post-roll Revver ads. Since the demise of Revver, all episodes and related content was moved over to

Blip.TV Blip (formerly blip.tv) was an American media platform for web series content and also offered a dashboard for producers of original web series to distribute and monetize their productions. The company was founded on May 5, 2005, and it was locate ...

which provided revenue to the producers by pre-roll ads until its demise in 2015.

Story

''Sam Has 7 Friends'' is variously described as a

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

murder mystery Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, ...

. The story follows an attractive cast of young actors around LA with the knowledge, throughout the series, that one of them is going to kill Samantha Breslow, an aspiring actress. The seven "friends" that appear in the series opening credits are Sam's boyfriend Patrick, her ex-boyfriend Willie, her best friend Dani, Dani's boyfriend Chivo, her neighbor Scott, Patrick's other girlfriend Vera, and Sam's agent Roman. The characters get in various fights with each other over the course of the 80 episodes. With webisodes of only 90 seconds a piece, each episode focused on the most interesting minute and a half of the characters' days. Throughout the series, Sam has a bad run of luck, going through two break-ups, struggling to find acting work and getting in fights with her best friend, her agent and her sister. After attempting various reconciliations, she decides she has had her fill of LA On the December 15, 2006 episode Sam is murdered while preparing to move out of her apartment and leave L.A. forever. The murderer cannot be seen in this final episode, leaving the mystery up in the air. According to the last episode posted on YouTube on June 29, 2009, the answer would be revealed in ''Prom Queen: The Homecoming''.

Reception

Critics had mixed reactions ''to Sam Has 7 Friends''.

Virginia Heffernan Virginia Heffernan (born August 8, 1969) is an American journalist and cultural critic. Since 2015, she has been a political columnist at the ''Los Angeles Times'' and a cultural columnist at ''Wired''. From 2003 to 2011, she worked as a staff w ...

of the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' described the series as "respectably viral." Television critic Andrew Wallenstein was perplexed by the series, and suggested that "maybe drama remains the domain of traditional mediums." The series received small audiences of several thousand viewers at YouTube, Revver and its own site. At iTunes the show was more popular, receiving more than 10,000 downloads a day through the show's run.

After Sam's Death

While the show attracted 3 million views during its initial run, ''Sam Has 7 Friends'' caught the eye of the

United Talent Agency United Talent Agency (UTA) is a global talent agency based in Beverly Hills, California. Established in 1991, it represents artists and other professionals across the entertainment industry. , the company has more than 1,400 global employees. U ...

, one of the "Big 5" Hollywood talent agencies, which operates a unit to scout for online talent. After shopping the series around, United Talent Agency and Big Fantastic caught the eye of

Michael Eisner Michael Dammann Eisner (born March 7, 1942) is an American businessman and former chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Walt Disney Company from September 1984 to September 2005. Prior to Disney, Eisner was president of rival film st ...

, the former CEO of

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...

who was creating a studio to produce content for the internet. Eisner acquired the rights for Season 1 of ''Sam Has 7 Friends'' as well as an option to produce any future seasons. Through his new production company,

, Eisner funded the production of Big Fantastic's second series, ''Prom Queen''. That series debuted on MySpace on April 1, 2007. In October 2012, both "Sam Has 7 Friends" and "Prom Queen" were relaunched on

The CW ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

's website.

References

External links

samhas7friends.com
— Official site {{DEFAULTSORT:Samhas7friends 2006 web series debuts 2006 web series endings American drama web series Video podcasts