Stardust aims to connect movie fans through social media

Stardust is a social app for fans to connect over movies & TV shows. Ashley Fauset, COO of Stardust, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss how people are staying connected, despite stay-at-home orders still in place.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, welcome back to "The First Trade." Now, being under quarantine isn't much fun. But it's allowed us to watch a lot of movies and shows. And one company is providing a virtual film club to keep everyone connected and let you become either Siskel or Ebert. Joining us now for more is Ashlee Fauset, CEO of Stardust. Ashley, good to see you this morning. Walk us through your business. For an old person such as me who may not be as cool as he used to be, what do you guys and gals exactly do?

ASHLEY FAUSET: Sure, good morning. Thank you for having me. So stardust is a social app for TV and movie fans where they can come together and discuss the latest plot points. They can leave video reactions to the last movie they watched and really come together and connect over what they're watching while they're all quarantined at home away from one another.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOUROS: Ashley, I'm curious about is this a subscription-based business strategy here? How much does it cost? And how you hope to hold onto these customers that you're getting right now post this pandemic?

ASHLEY FAUSET: Sure, excellent question. So the app is free to download in the app store or the Google Play store. And really, what Stardust is about is building that community with others focused on TV and movies. So we've been around for a few years. We have a pretty decent user base now and have been drawing a lot of attention as people have been consuming more and more content at home.

BRIAN SOZZI: And Ashley, what are some of the key trends? What are people watching?

ASHLEY FAUSET: Oh, gosh, great question. So obviously, we've seen the numbers on Netflix spike considerably. A lot of our users have been watching the latest season of "Ozark." The Chris Hemsworth movie that they put out called "Extraction" did really well. And then, you know, Disney+ has really moved into the second slot there as the streaming service. Last week it was Star Wars Day. And so there was a huge burst of activity in the app around that entire franchise. They've also released a lot of new content to that platform, servicing lot of users and looking at their Disney Gallery show, which is an inside look at behind the scenes of various series, "The Mandalorian." Beyond that, people are watching Prime and Hulu.

But we're also seeing trends around users watching things like "Back to the Future," "Stand by Me." They're going back and watching some of these older classic films that I think bring them a sense of nostalgia, a sense of peace. They're watching characters that they know and love, which I think offers a lot of comfort right now in this uncertain time.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOUROS: You think this is the way it's going to be for the foreseeable future, Ashley? I mean, you know, what's your take on us getting back to the movie theaters, you know, when we can again?

ASHLEY FAUSET: Yeah, I mean, it's going to take a little time. Obviously, the theaters are going to have to put some precautions in place. We've seen some places that are starting to tiptoe into that in the US. But I think capacity at theaters will be much lower. They'll have to take social distancing into consideration, obviously.

I think the studio slate will roll out. A lot of studios are sitting on content right now that they would've been pushing out. So we might see longer runs in theaters to give those titles an opportunity to actually make back some of the budget that they put into production. But you know, there are really interesting things happening right now with premieres going straight to in-home on-demand premieres. So Universal took a chance and put out their "Trolls World Tour" a couple of weeks back, saw big success with that. Warner Brothers is pushing out their brand new movie "Scoob" today. You know, AMC is potentially going to get bought by Amazon, it's rumored. So I think it's still early to tell, but I think there going to be a lot of very significant shifts that will change the way we consume content, movies, and television moving forward.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOUROS: All right, Ashley Fauset, CEO of Stardust, thanks for taking some time. And enjoy your weekend of content viewing.

ASHLEY FAUSET: Thank you, you too. Have a great day.