Smosh previews their new comedy flick 'Ghostmates'
Anthony Padilla, and Ian Hecox from Smosh, an online comedy YouTube channel, stopped by AOL's BUILDseriesNYC recently to promote their upcoming second feature-length film, Ghostmates which will be streamed exclusively on YouTube Red starting December 14th!
Padilla and Hecox have come a long way in their YouTube journeys since they did their hilarious and entertaining Mortal Kombat Theme song video. Fast forward 11 years, and the guys have made over 800 videos, accrued 22.4 million subscribers, earned 6.1 billion video views, launched many successful spin-off channels such as @smoshgames, and @ShutUpCartoons, and have their own website dedicated to daily content featuring hilarious photos, videos, and articles. Here's 5 things we learned from their interview:
1. Smosh celebrated 11 years last month.
The comedy duo celebrated 11 years as YouTubers on 11/19/16! When asked if they did anything special to celebrate, Padilla said that they tweeted 'Thanks' in shorthand stylized as 'Thx guys!' and Hecox added that "we might've given each other a high-five". Both Padilla and Hecox re-enacted their high-five and further said "Yo, did it!!" and "11 years!" respectively.
So it's safe to say they didn't have a huge celebration like they did last year when they reached the decade milestone.
2. Anthony and Ian's comedic influences were South Park and The Lonely Island.
"We loved South Park, [The] Lonely Island I think we were watching them before they blew up on SNL." told Padilla.
"When we started watching Lonely Island and they weren't on SNL yet, they did "Just 2 Guyz" and the "Bing Bong Brothers", like OG YouTube when lot of people were doing sketch comedy at that time." explained Hecox.
3. Ghostmates production process differed from Smosh: The Movie.
Padilla confirmed that this time around that it [Ghostmates] "was different all throughout the entire process. This one we had a much bigger hand in. We worked closely with our writer and the outline process all the way up to the final script. And this one we also took a different approach. We felt like we wanted to evolve a little bit so we started writing it as more of just a story that we really enjoyed and then we started trying to find ways to add our brand of comedy to it."
Hecox added " with some comedy movies they just focus on the comedy and then you get that sort of response from people that watch those kind of movies and they will be like 'It felt like one really long drawn out sketch' So we wanted to really focus on telling a dramatic story first and then putting comedy into it wherever we could."
4. Rapper T-Pain stars in Ghostmates.
"He came in and he blew us out of the water. He made us look really bad. He brought so much content, almost all the stuff you see in there. There's a bit where he's like saying all this stuff why he had a great life and all the things he has and 'he's done' and that was ALL improvised!" happily confessed Padilla.
Hecox went on to say" I wouldn't know what's out of character, [and] what's in character in T-Pain?! He's just T-Pain!"
By this small tease alone, it definitely makes his performance worthy of checking out when you guys see the film for yourselves.
5. Don't give up hope on this year's "Food Battle" video.
When I asked them "will there be a new "Food Battle" video this year?", Padilla responded "That's a good question. There's lots of people asking us to do a "Food Battle" each year in the summer."
Hecox further remarked, "So for those people who don't know about it, "Food Battle" is an annual thing that we do and we've been doing it ever since 2006 and its this thing where I have a favorite food and he [Padilla] has a favorite food and we battle to find out which one can do more everyday tasks than the other. Like "oh my doughnut can be a pogo stick".
"It kind of started as a joke because we were like 'Let's put 2006 on the end so it sounds intense!' And then come 2007, people were like 'You named it 2006, where's the 2007 one?' Oh I guess it's a series now!" added Padilla.
"So we just kept it running forever. So the year is not over, so we'll see." concluded Hecox.
There you have it everyone! Maybe we'll see a holiday themed "Food Battle" this year! What do you guys think? Comment below letting us know which "Food Battle" year was your favorite and what are your predictions for this year's "Food Battle"?
Check out the trailer for Ghostmates before the big premiere on 12/14/16 on YouTube Red. You can sign up for a one month free-trial or join for $9.99/month. Be sure to follow Anthony and Ian on Twitter: @anthonypadilla, @smoshian and on Instagram: @anthonypadilla, @ianhecox .