Adult Time is launching its first gay studio, Heteroflexible, which is looking to explore largely uncharted territory by targeting the underserved gay-curious market. Given parent company Gamma’s experience with managing established gay brands Next Door Studios and Falcon Studios, as well as launching several new projects in the space like Disruptive Films, the company is seeking to leverage 15 years of know-how for this new venture.
In 2022, the Adult Time team began producing gay content, something they had never done before, so there was a learning curve on both the production and marketing sides.
It has been great to see the outpouring of positive feedback from different members, including a large chunk from straight customers curious about this new genre.
“Our purpose was to get good, and versatile, at creating gay content,” says Frank Stacy, marketing director for Adult Time. “So in our first year, we built a catalog of very eclectic offerings, both as a way to see what would be popular and to learn how to do it properly. It was always our end goal to eventually launch a new gay studio within the Adult Time master brand, and that’s what we are doing this year with Heteroflexible.
“The core idea for Heteroflexible has been on the table for quite some time and we actually purchased the domain years ago,” Stacy explains. “The idea to create something for the gay-curious market specifically came from a mix of observations we had about our own member base and trends we saw online, both on social media platforms and adult websites. When looking at what has been exploding in popularity in the last few years — animated futanari content, trans content, bisexual content, etc. — it seems clear that there is a demand for gender-bending porn.”
Stacy notes that adult entertainment is very often about what is forbidden, so it made sense to the team that for a straight guy, the ultimate taboo might be gay sex. As far as what distinguishes Heteroflexible from more traditional gay or bisexual brands in terms of content and marketing, Stacy believes it is all about the point of view they are adopting.
“At every stage of the project, we are asking ourselves, ‘Could a straight guy be into that?’” he offers. “It is reflected in the tropes we tackle, in the camera angles we choose and in the styling of the scenes. Our inspirations for the studio are also all over the place, with multiple elements in our product vision that stem from analyzing straight brands.”
For its “Femboyish” series in particular, the company hopes to create content that, in many ways, could be indiscernible from straight porn with either cis or trans women. Adult Time sees this both as a way to pique curiosity to get customers interested in gay content, and a way to access promotional spaces historically reserved for straight products.
Meanwhile, “Jerk Buddies” — one of the company’s two ongoing gay series last year, along with “Daddy’s Boy” — will also offer content on Heteroflexible. Playing to what Stacy believes is a core strength of Adult Time, story-driven porn, makes “Jerk Buddies” a safe bet for the company’s flagship gay studio, in his view.
“All episodes revolve around straight characters exploring side-by-side or mutual masturbation,” he notes. “It’s a playful project without being downright comedy. We are poking fun at the conventions of what is straight and what is gay, which fits really well with the Heteroflexible mindset.”
Nonetheless, Stacy sees “Femboyish” as the biggest content investment on Heteroflexible — and the biggest gamble, which could also yield the biggest reward.
“It is, to my knowledge, the very first professionally shot ongoing femboy series,” he says. “Femboy content, just like cross-dressing, is usually found amongst a few amateur accounts on social media or on tube sites. It also is very popular within the ‘porn art’ world, on hentai-related websites. ‘Femboys’ — short for ‘feminine boys’ — are male-identifying performers that play with gender stereotypes and like to dress up in a more feminine way, with makeup, elaborate lingerie, etc.”
One reason Stacy believes a pro series has not been done before is the difficulty of setting all the right pieces in place. The new studio is looking to nail the right casting, the right styling, the right pairings and the right crews to shoot it all with the right camera angles.
“A lot of work went into getting this project started,” Stacy offers. “So far, the reaction within the Adult Time community has been shockingly good, blowing away even our high expectations. Considering the limited number of gay customers we have on the platform, it has been great to see the outpouring of positive feedback from different members, including a large chunk from straight customers curious about this new genre.”
The studio also plans to produce a spinoff of Adult Time’s “How Women Orgasm” series, in the form of “How Men Orgasm.” In terms of production, both are very similar, Stacy points out. The main difference is the wider variety among the performers, something resulting more from the realities of today's talent pool than from a conscious decision.
“We have seasoned gay actors, straight porn stars in their first professional solo scenes and independent performers — it’s a really wide range of people,” Stacy emphasizes. “The result is a unique docuseries presenting performers in a new light. I believe that it has the potential to reach curious straight men, gay porn fans and even female viewers.”
Since each series under the Heteroflexible umbrella needs different kinds of performers, the casting net is wide. As a result, across its library, the studio has content shot in LA, San Diego and Montreal. Since the goal is to appeal to a gay-curious audience, there is a pronounced focus on booking femboys, twinks and clean-cut jocks, while steering away from overly masculine talent such as guys with big beards and hairy muscles.
As is the case for all Adult Time original content, the writing is handled by the internal preproduction team. Shooting is being handled by various crews to help access a broader casting pool, which the company finds is vital for a product like Heteroflexible. Marketing may entail trying out different approaches for reaching out and converting customers.
“We intend to see if we can really market something like this to straight audiences,” Stacy says. “The next months will involve a lot of testing on our end. For example, we plan on launching a promotional mailing campaign for ‘Femboyish’ that will be sent to all of our mailing lists — fans of straight, gay and even lesbian and trans porn.
“We will be taking a very similar approach regarding asset creation,” he continues. “We will need to keep an open mind and a flexible mindset, so we can fine-tune the product and the message around it as we go along. As we grow our user base, we will better understand what they like and how to promote it.
In describing the new studio’s long-term goals and the overall style of content Heteroflexible is looking to craft, Stacy underlines that Adult Time caters to all sexual preferences, which he says makes the brand different from most other porn networks.
“But the truth is that a huge chunk of our audience is still mostly interested in straight porn, so we assign our production budget accordingly,” he says. “This means that our gay production budget for Heteroflexible is fairly small, especially if you compare it to other websites managed by Gamma. In terms of sheer volume, we can’t compete and don’t want to compete with something like ASGMax, our gay streaming platform we launched earlier this year.”
For Heteroflexible, the company is going the niche route, Stacy explains, seeking to carve out a place for something that is unique and explore a genre that has yet to be explored broadly by professional producers.
“Hopefully, we will find a few fans willing to support this wild idea and we will be able to expand within this underserved market,” he says. “If it’s any indication of potential success, the cross-viewership on Adult Time in the last years for trans content has gone up exponentially, meaning that more and more people that join for straight or lesbian content end up enjoying trans content as well. We hope that will be the case for this new brand as well.”
