Ray William Johnson's Runaway Planet Sells Comedy To FX

According to Ray William Johnson, it looks like the program he was showing to some television networks has been picked up by FX.

Back in mid-March 2013, Ray's new channel Runaway Planet posted a video where Ray and his girlfriend, Anna Akana, discussed "pilot season" where actors and actresses go out for TV roles on new shows that are offered to the networks.

Ray mentions having some disappointment with how he did last year and that he had a realization he should be pitching his own show.

Which seems to have been successful with the recent announcement that it looks like Ray sold a comedy about his life to FX, a television channel available by cable and satellite owned by Fox Entertainment Group which is itself a division of News Corp.

It may actually appear on a sub-channel of FX called FXX, which will be launched in early September 2013. FXX plans include featuring "original and acquired comedy series" of which Ray's comedy appears to be one.

First, watch this video where they discuss some preliminary plans.

Ray and Anna started RunawayPlanet (following the problems Ray had with Maker Studios) as a "studio" where they plan on uploading premium content.

So far the channel has over 17 million views and about 375,000 subscribers which may not be =3 numbers but still a very respectable start for a channel that only began posting videos towards the end of November 2012.

There was some mention of the struggles Ray had with Maker, but mostly this channel focuses on the behind-the-scenes stuff and you see Ray less in his "Equals 3" persona and more as Ray William Johnson, along with Akana who is listed as co-founder of Runaway Planet.

The video above where Ray and Anna discuss the future was followed by another where Ray mentions that that Runaway Planet has received funding which was probably a needed step so being able to produce the comedy that they sold to FX.

There's no word whether or not Ray (or Anna) will actually "star" in this show, but this is big, big news and is a proof Ray is moving past the Maker problems although they don't seem to be resolved and at this point, both of Ray's other channels, Yourfavoritemartian and BreakingNYC have been mothballed, likely at least til the dispute with Maker gets resolved.

In the meantime, follow Ray and Anna as they try to grow their studio on RunawayPlanet. Another name they seem to have floated was "Runaway Thoughts", but nothing further happened there.

(Sidenote: Update. Looks like a lot has happened since this was posted.) Ray and Anna split up personally, and professionally, and not much happened with this venture.

That lovely redhead is Kelly, aka "Mrs Johnson".
Ray and Kelly dated for a while before they tied the knot. Ray featured her a bit on his channel and I couldn't help but be impressed as Ray scored a hottie and then put that ring on it, as the song goes.

The name "RunawayPlanet" was a cool choice, but someone else had a prior claim to the name so he changed it to "RunawayWorld" but not much to report on that front.

Ray's other channel, Yourfavoritemartian, was subsequently re-opened and he's posted about forty video uploaded since he started the channel again 3 years ago, with millions of views (no surprise there).

Actually, Ray's little side channel project has a cumulative alltime view count of over 1 billion (Dang! That's a LOT of views for a side project!)

Here's his most recent video from that side-channel, uploaded May 2024 called "Real Girl" which has generated over 1.5 million views to date.

But, let's not brush aside Anna Akana's main channel where she's posted just over 600 videos during the 11-plus years she's been active on YouTube, with over 380 million views to date.

Here's one of Anna's recent videos for your viewing pleasure, called "Attractive female students no longer earned higher grades when classes moved online during COVID".

Its too bad all the promise it looked like the videos seem to offer, Ray choice to private them, likely because the conversations between Anna and Ray were casual, with their relationship going bye-bye, it probably seemed like a good idea to remove them from public viewing.

And we're left with the thoughts of what might have been.

BUT. Both moved on and unfortunately nothing really came to fruition with this endeavor. But like most, I'll keep an eye on both RWJ and Anna as they maneuver to find more success on Youtube and beyond.