World of Wonder Races Beyond RuPaul Into Retail, Live Events, SVOD And More

Launching a diversified media empire on the sequined back of a towering drag queen may not be the most traditional way to become a Hollywood success, but it's certainly "werqed," as RuPaul might put it, for World of Wonder.

Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey founded World of Wonder in 1991, and have been creating reality TV and documentaries in a fairly traditional way for nearly three decades since. But 10 years after RuPaul's Drag Race debuted on the small LGBTQ-oriented cable channel Logo, the company has ventured into new businesses as wildly diverse as the outfits of the company's signature star.

"We’ve always been built on this idea that today’s fringe is tomorrow’s mainstream," said Barbato. "We believe that we are actually all outsiders. That’s the idea that drives the company, the people who work there, and the content that comes out of World of Wonder."

Drag Race has become a huge hit, moved networks, and since has spun off localized versions in Canada, the United Kingdom and Thailand. World of Wonder has created several other reality shows, most notably Million Dollar Listings, with versions set in Los Angeles and New York, and Backyard Envy, which Barbato said, "does for gardening what Top Chef does for food."

Like many established media companies from Disney on down, World of Wonder is profitably mining its own catalog for new programming. Fox Searchlight is remaking WOW's 2000 feature-length documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye into a scripted movie, starring Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain as fallen evangelist Jim Bakker and his wife.

Tammy Faye Bakker "is one of the first drag queens we worked with and she didn’t even know it," Barbato said. "She wasn’t trying to be natural."

The company is currently producing several long-form documentaries, and is now involved in features and episodic scripted programming too. And that's just the stuff that regular Hollywood companies do in the Peak TV era.

'We believe that a story is a story," said Bailey. "People talk about the size of the screen that matters. It’s a story. And a story can be told in multiple different ways."

One long-ago project, Party Monster, became a scripted movie. More recently, the company has pushed the documentary form, partnering with StoryCorps, which records oral histories of U.S. life. The recordings often appear in segments on National Public Radio, and all become part of the Smithsonian Institute's permanent collection.

YouTube commissioned World of Wonder to create Stonewall Outloud, a documentary short built around audio recordings that StoryCorps gathered from veterans of the Stonewall protests 50 years ago in New York City. The protests were a watershed in the gay rights movement, fighting back against sustained police harassment of homosexuals.

"YouTube came to us and said,'How can we bring this to life for a new generation,'” said Barbato. "And at first, we said, 'We can’t,' but then we started thinking about it."

They gathered a group of young actors and media stars to lip-sync the StoryCorps recordings, inspired by a regular segment on Drag Race called Lip Sync For Your Life.

"This documentary is basically one long Lip Sync for Your Life," Barbato said. "It’s really powerful to watch these young people truly connect with the voices of the pioneers who were actually at Stonewall in Greenwich Village as it happened. But for us, it’s all about the story. It’s less about what whether we’re doing it in a fictional way or a non-fictional way."

Part of World of Wonder's success comes from its willingness to be anything but a traditional production company. Just remaining independent as Hollywood consolidates is a statement.

But the company also has embarked on a string of less common ventures, including a retail store and art gallery, DragCon conventions in Los Angeles and New York, a subscription video-on-demand channel and a huge social-media presence, WOW Presents, which has 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube.

And out of that, the company launched WOW Presents Plus, which costs $3.99 per month. Barbato and Bailey declined to provide user metrics such as number of subscribers, but said the channel is profitable, and generating enough money to finance multiple new shows coming this fall.

"We have been surprised by the success and enthusiasm for WoW Presents Plus, to the extent that we’re able to make original content specifically for it," Bailey said. "Netflix is the elephant in the room, or the giant, or however you want to call them. But it doesn’t have to be about them. Audiences want to find something that’s original, and authentic, and speaks to them. And so it doesn’t necessarily have to be about bigness. Our goal is to really create an extended sense of family."

The company also just renewed for a second season Werq The World, which goes behind-the-scenes on the Drag Race tour by 12 drag performers across 10 countries.

"It’s a long-form documentary series, which probably we could have sold to another streamer, because that show Drag Race is a huge global hit," Barbato said. "But for us, part of continuing to produce our own content is partially about having complete creative freedom.We might not have the same budget size, but what we don’t have in budget, we make up with enthusiasm and creative freedom."

The company moved into the convention business as a spinoff from Drag Race, not knowing quite what to expect from who would show up.

"We never had any con(vention) experience, but we just felt like there was an opportunity that the people who share our beliefs might want to come together," said Barbato. "And they did."

The attendees tend to pretty split between women and men, from every age, Barbato said.  

"They don’t look like an 18-to-34 demographic," Barbato said. "It is multi generational, it is incredibly diverse. I think there’s a perception that it would be just…everybody would be wearing high heels. There’s never enough high heels for me, but it’s not that. It’s just people who identify with being an outsider."

The company also opened a retail space on the first floor of its Hollywood Boulevard offices in the heart of L.A.'s Hollywood neighborhood. In the middle of what many call the Retail Apocalypse, opening a store was a bold, perhaps risky move.

But when a long-time tenant moved out, and RuPaul's Hollywood Walk of Fame star was placed outside the front door, Barbato and Bailey decided to try a Drag Race store and art gallery. The hot seller: a purple "Shade" button, similar to Staples' "Easy" red button.

"Our goal is to create a space for people to come to," Barbato said. "Many times you hear (tourists) say how disappointing it is when they show up on Hollywood Boulevard. We really want to increase the experiences with people and have more of them. So it’s a great place for people to come because, in an increasingly virtual space, what is unique is the opportunity to have a physical experience."

The company is looking at some of the new storytelling opportunities in areas such as virtual reality, but Barbato and Bailey said they're not yet ready to announce anything. Regardless, it's still all about telling stories, Bailey said.

"I think technology has advanced so much that you can tell a factual story in so many ways," said Bailey. "What we love about stories, and especially factual stories, is the truth really is stranger than fiction. Sometimes they just can’t make this stuff up."