Adrian Grenier and Seth Meyers are two of the latest Hollywood stars to sign up to do original series on Hulu, as the company on Thursday announced it has picked up four new shows and garnered revenue of $420 million in 2011.
Hulu used the opening day of the first upfronts for digital video to tout its subscriber growth and announce the new shows.
Hulu Plus, its subscription service, now has 2 million paid subscribers, which the company said makes it the fastest-growing paid video service in U.S. history.
It also holds 20 percent of the online video market with viewers watching about 1,000 videos a second, the company reported.
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As for the new shows, Meyers, Morgan Spurlock, Grenier and others were there as the online video giant sought to wow advertisers.
Meyers brought Hulu “The Awesomes,” the tale of a superhero and his allies battling villains, the paparazzi and their own reputation for ineptitude. Grenier recast his award-winning documentary “Don’t Quit Your Daydream,” which follows famous musicians looking for “could-have-been musical artists to collaborate on a new song giving them a second-chance at stardom,” for the online portal.
The other two shows are “Flow,” from Michael Wendschuh and “We Got Next.”
Hulu is one of several online portals making a major push into original content, and had already announced shows like "Battleground" from Marc Webb and "A Day in the Life" from Spurlock.
This new take on the upfronts, at which television networks annually court advertising dollars, is the latest sign of the many players entering this field. Netflix, Yahoo and YouTube are among the other major online video destinations making presentations.