Apparently Tosca Musk cares about romance novels the way her brother Elon Musk cares about posting memes on Twitter. That’s why she’s launched Passionflix, a growing streaming site dedicated to steamy adaptations of Harlequin page-turners, erotic fan-fic and more.
Profiled by The New York Times, the fledgling entrepreneur explained that she’ll be sitting in the director’s chair for many of the platform’s adaptations, while also licensing existing content such as 2013’s Random Encounters starring a pre-Royal Wedding Meghan Markle and the 2014 rom-com Two Night Stand starring Miles Teller as well as tried and true swooners like 1995’s Sabrina — yes, the one with Harrison Ford — and 1996’s The English Patient.
Subscriptions to the site cost just $6 per month and content is rated on a unique scale from “Oh So Vanilla” to “NSFW (Not Safe For Work),” with “Mildly Titillating,” “Passion & Romance,” and “Toe-Curling Yumminess” in between.
“Most of the time people look down at romance — there is apparently something radical in having female desire as a main theme — and they don’t think that romance is intellectual enough,” Musk told the Times. “I think that is wrong. Romance is about validating emotions. It’s about removing shame from sexuality. It’s about uplifting stories…Whether second-chance romance or Cinderella story, at the end of the day it’s two people who connect, communicate and compromise.”
The tech billionaire’s sister refused to divulge the size of Passionflix’s subscriber base in the interview, but she did explain that the site’s been running since 2017. However, a spokesperson for the fledgling streamer claimed memberships “grew 73 percent” in 2021 compared the standstill at the height of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has been spinning his wheels when it comes to his boldly announced plan to take over Twitter to the tune of $44 billion. In the wake of mass deactivations following the news, he now says the deal is “on hold” as he presses Twitter’s executives regarding how many spam accounts are on the social platform.
