George Lucas and Steven Spielberg recently shared their predictions for a new movie paradigm. In these box office titans’ estimation, the cinematic landscape will soon be further littered with $200 million blockbusters, low-budget horror flicks, and not a lot in between. These limited theatrical options, however, should also set up niche content to succeed outside of the Cineplex, which is why online comedy emporium CollegeHumor is poised to do well in rolling out its first feature, Coffee Town .

Ricky Van Veen

“We’d always had it in the back of our heads that we wanted to do something longer form,” says Ricky Van Veen, cofounder of the IAC-owned comedy site.

CollegeHumor had taken steps toward lengthier content in the past. In 2009, The CollegeHumor Show aired briefly on MTV. Two years later, the company released a 30-minute special called Fired from its premier in-house sketch duo Jake and Amir. The special sold on YouTube and iTunes, a test run for their online distribution platform. Meanwhile, agents at United Talent were steadily looking out for scripts in keeping with the tone of CollegeHumor that also seemed affordable to make. Even before this point, though, the company had a deal with Paramount to develop the first CollegeHumor movie back in 2005.

Jake & Amir

“It was kind of like what National Lampoon did in the ’70s and ’80s with Animal House and Vacation,” Van Veen says. “We wanted to see if we could sort of start a franchise from the brand.”

Brad Copeland

Of course, having a deal in place is not the same as having a movie in production. Van Veen and the CollegeHumor crew found themselves stuck in development hell, and eventually the deal with the studio sputtered out. At the same time, Brad Copeland, who wrote and directed Coffee Town, which arrives on VOD on July 9, was also finding frustration with the studio system experience.

“I’ve written movies for studios and you have to watch someone else direct them and in a few cases, it’s happened where it just wasn’t the tone I thought it would be and you just have to watch it go through someone else’s processed filter, and the product that comes out at the end–even if it’s something successful like Wild Hogs–isn’t the movie you envisioned it to be,” Copeland says. “It’s really quite painful.”

Copeland has written for films recently, but he cut his teeth writing for television–where the writer’s input is seen as much more valuable. He’d been hoping to resume the kind of control over the process he’d enjoyed as a TV writer, but in the film world. Eventually, these aspirations manifested themselves in the form of Coffee Town. Struck by inspiration in a Starbucks one day in 2011, Copeland sat down and began outlining a story about a guy whose local coffee spot is his office.