After producing five films that have grossed more than $650 million at the global box office, the team at Lionsgate said bringing their films and characters directly to the audience that is most invested in them was the best decision they could make, and YouTube seemed like the perfect platform for it. Like other premium series on YouTube, people must have a subscription to YouTube Red, which costs $10 a month 
 
 Step Up is set to enter production later this year and premiere on YouTube Red sometime in 2017.
– YouTube is hoping Channing Tatum will catapult them into the realm of Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. The cat-video provider just announced Step Up as its "first full-fledged, big-budget original drama series," Deadline reports. The series will debut in 2017 on the subscription-only YouTube Red. Step Up is based on the film franchise of the same name that first loosed Channing Tatum upon the world on the way to making $650 million. In fact, Tatum and Step Up-costar-turned-wife Jenna Dewan Tatum will executive produce the new series. An executive at Lionsgate, the studio behind Step Up, calls it “a distinctive, noisy, platform-defining series," according to the New York Times. Lionsgate wanted to bring Step Up—the series will be about dancers at a performing arts school—to an audience that was already invested in it, Polygon reports. “We know that dance is a hugely successful global category on YouTube, so I’m excited to have a series rooted in such an enormously popular genre on our platform," YouTube's head of original content tells Deadline. Each of the first season's 10 episodes will have a budget of few million dollars and utilize YouTube stars for its cast. YouTube hopes Step Up will be its version of Transparent or House of Cards, convincing more people to pay $10 a month for a YouTube Red subscription.