A Sarnia comedy improv group is now on Amazon Prime.
The Fidgets, featuring Chris Reid, Dave Lane and John Hollingsworth, recently released their 60 and 90-minute special, Speak No Evil, on the popular streaming service.
"That was some craziness. It's always been our goal to get on a big streaming service like Amazon Prime or Netflix," said Hollingsworth. "A year ago we wrapped up a crowdfunding campaign where we just had people who love us give us money, basically, from all across Canada and the states. We needed to raise about $11,000, we raised just over $8,000, so it was enough to get our project started."
Hollingsworth said they then flew out to Vernon, BC to shoot their special, and that after it was complete, the group was in wait-and-see mode.
"We gave it to our reps at Crown Entertainment in Tennessee and they shopped it, couldn't find any buyers, and then we just got an email Monday at 3:30 in the afternoon, 'Congratulations, your project has been picked up by Amazon Prime," he said. "It's crazy. Everyone talks about an overnight success -- it might seem to people like this is an overnight success but it's been 13 years, and we got the best job in the world, we get to make people laugh."
Hollingsworth said they'll continue working hard to grow the group.
"Probably what we'll do is we will work this year on coming up with new sketches and tightening our sketches, and probably in 2021, we'll shoot another special and see if they're still interested," he said. "We are a comedy improv group just like you'd find with Whose Line Is It Anyway? We work really hard to make sure that our comedy is excellent and family-friendly, so you can bring the whole family out to a show."