Niccolo Messina wants to help young filmmakers get their first break in the industry that defines Los Angeles. 

So, he started V Channels Media.

From the company’ headquarters in Beverly Hills, Messina directs his staff of seven employees to give assistance – both financial and operational – to budding Spielbergs, Camerons and Scorceses.

“What we are trying to do is create that environment for young filmmakers to do their first job, to do their first work without the pressure of debt, and also making sure that their movies are shown and are seen by millions of people,” Messina said. “That is in a nutshell what we are doing.”

Messina came to the entertainment industry from the tech industry. Until moving to the United States and starting V Channels in 2022, he worked for a large tech company in Europe reading internet data traffic.

That is when he found out that people were searching for very specific films, such as action movies or thriller movies, he said. 

He also found out that practically no one was distributing on YouTube in 2017, the video sharing site owned by Google. So that became the germ of the idea to start V Channels.

“I came to L.A. with the idea of doing this and it worked,” Messina said. 

Today, V Channels is one of the biggest movie distributors on YouTube, especially for genre films – action, thrillers, sci-fi and horror movies.

For the first three months, a production from a filmmaker just starting out is made available on all the advertising video on demand platforms such as Tubi, Pluto TV, Roku and Freevee, which is owned by Amazon.com Inc. 

The films are then transferred over to the V Channels YouTube sites – V Movies, V Horror, Revo Movies – and channels in Spanish and Portuguese.  

Messina said he has invested all of $50,000 into the business to date. 

Why should he spend millions building a platform when YouTube has more than 2 billion monthly users and is lacking in movies, he added. 

“I would just use YouTube, which already has a reach of 2 billion users to show to the people movies,” Messina said.

So he didn’t need to invest a lot of money into the startup. All he needed to do was convince independent distributors to give him their movies, as at the beginning he didn’t produce movies, but simply licensed them from other people, he continued. 

“That was the job. I did it, I didn’t need money,” he added.

These days, he puts up the money to fund microbudget movies – or those between $30,000 and $100,000. On average, he’ll put $50,000 toward each film. He has funded about 150 films over the past 15 months, Messina said. Some of the films they have produced include “The Workout,” “Dark Parasite,” “The Dutchman” and “Stupid Games.”

Preferring to remain in his area of technology, Messina gives each filmmaker complete creative freedom and never gets involved in any aspect of the film’s development or production.

He engages in a revenue-sharing agreements with the filmmakers. 

“After I recoup my investment in the movie, they get a lifetime 30% of the revenues of the movie,” Messina said. 

He also provides the filmmakers with data he has collected from YouTube on what kind of movies are popular with viewers. 

“So they have guidance, they have finance and they’ve got distribution, which is a dream for young filmmakers,” Messina said. 

There have been some films that have gotten 7 million streams, which is gigantic for a new talent, he said, adding, “We have movies with 20 million streams.” Some of the movies with that many streams include “Stranger” and “The Dutchman.”