Freestyle Digital Media has acquired North American VOD rights to Sock It To Me: The Legend of George Schlatter, the documentary about the 96-year-old producer who created NBC’s Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. The film will hit digital platforms on Dec. 8.
Why a Laugh-In doc now?
Laugh-In premiered in 1968 and became a launchpad for Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin, while shaping the variety-to-late-night lineage that led to Saturday Night Live. Schlatter’s seven-decade producing and directing career provides the archive spine of Chris Coronado’s film, which was produced by Coronado, Greg Myers and Dayna Winston.
The interview list is deliberately broad: Hawn, Tom Hanks, Tomlin, Martin Short, Billy Crystal, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, Lionel Richie, Lisa Ann Walter, Berry Gordy and Byron Allen. That mix signals more than a single-generation nostalgia play; it gives VOD platforms a set of recognisable faces to promote across demos.
What Freestyle is buying
The deal covers North American VOD. Freestyle, a division of Allen Media Group, negotiated directly with the filmmakers and George Schlatter Productions. That is a lean rights arrangement—no studio intermediary—and it lets the distributor move the title into digital windows quickly.
- Rights: North American VOD
- Release date: Dec. 8
- Subject: George Schlatter, creator of Laugh-In
- Director: Chris Coronado
Schlatter said in a statement: “You bet your sweet bippy I’m excited for audiences to see it and remind them of the power of laughter!”
Why the deal matters
For streaming buyers, the title lands in a category that has become reliable filler between big originals: documentary portraits of influential creators. They are cheaper to acquire than scripted remakes, come with built-in archive, and can be sliced into short clips for social feeds and ad-supported tiers.
Coronado, who has been creative director at George Schlatter Productions since 2016, gets both the historical witnesses—Hawn and Tomlin—and the later inheritors—Kimmel, Short and Crystal—in the same film. That two-generation structure is what makes the title more useful to a platform than a single-artist tribute might be.
The announcement is digital-first: the press materials set a Dec. 8 VOD date and do not describe a theatrical window, which means platform placement, search and clip strategy will carry the marketing load. For a film built around a 96-year-old creator, that also keeps the rollout close to the moment Schlatter can participate in the conversation.
For media planners, the useful signal is how a rights buyer packages a single subject through a constellation of stars. Expect promo cuts built around Hawn, Tomlin, Crystal and Leno rather than around Schlatter alone; each name can run as its own audience segment.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
