Documentary+ Moves Into Original Programming With LAPD Doc ‘Fireworks’

Documentary+, the free streaming service launched by non-fiction studio XTR, is getting into original programming and has ordered its first project.

The company will launch Fireworks, a feature doc directed by Nathan Truesdell, who recently produced Oscar-nominated film Ascension.

Fireworks will delve into a botched LAPD operation that causes catastrophe in an LA neighborhood.

The film will be part of Documentary+’s new Lost and Found collection, which is one of three strands that it is launching as part of the originals drive. Lost and Found will feature stranger than fiction stories using found footage.

The other two collections are Pop Docs, documentaries that sit at the collision between controversy and pop culture, and After Hours, slow content documentaries created for a late night audience.

The inaugural original for the Pop Docs strand will be a film about Hot Cheetos, which goes behind the fascination of the cult snack food and the controversy over its creation.

Documentary+ launched in January 2021 and the service, led by XTR boss Bryn Mooser and co-founders Justin Lacob and Kathryn Everett, said that its average watch time on the platform is above 80 minutes.

“There’s a huge white space opportunity for non-fiction on FAST channels, where we saw nearly a 2000% increase in viewership from October 2021 to January 2022,” said Lacob. “Our Documentary+ late night audience is looking to engage in content with a different rhythm, so we created After Hours, a slow television format that is mesmerizing and meditative. We found that stranger than fiction has been one of our top performing categories, therefore we created Lost and Found to evoke a 90’s public access meets grindhouse genre. With Pop Docs, we’ll give our audience the zeitgeist topics that we hope will be a draw to bring new audiences to the platform.”