Search for Bobby or Renee Peoples on Tubi, and 20-plus feature films will pop up, the majority of them released within the last five years. The married couple may be the most prolific filmmakers in Las Vegas, and they’ve found a home in free streaming. With titles such as Blood Pact, Mistress for Hire, and Memoirs of a Vixen, their dramas and psychological thrillers draw in curious viewers with titillating premises and stories of betrayal, murder, and sexual intrigue — and their audience is always eager for more.
“Well, I have ADHD,” Bobby says, explaining the duo’s prodigious output, which includes eight feature films in 2025 and a planned seven more for 2026. “I’ve got to stay busy. If I don’t, I’ll get bored real easily.” The Peoples clearly haven’t been bored since moving to Vegas from Atlanta in June 2020. They were already established professionals before coming to town, but moving here seems to have supercharged their focus. Bobby cites legendary low-budget producers Lloyd Kaufman and Roger Corman as inspirations, and the Peopleses are similarly scrappy and tenacious.
That requires time and devotion, which means that filmmaking is a full-time job for both. Virginia native Bobby started working in the film industry in 2001 as a production assistant for New Millennium Studios, the company owned by actors Tim Reid and Daphne Maxwell Reid. Renee comes from a theater background, and the two met in the Atlanta film scene in 2006. It began a professional partnership that grew into a personal one.
After 25 years in the tech industry, Renee quit her job in 2021, so that the couple could dedicate all their time to their film career. “It took a lot of encouraging from him, because I was so used to the check every two weeks,” she says, but the risk has paid off: “We’ve made way more money with me being out of corporate than me being in corporate.”
A big part of that is thanks to Tubi. “A lot of filmmakers were able to make more films and pay their actors and their crew because Tubi cut those checks,” Renee says. “The bulk of our income comes from Tubi.” Tubi commissioned the 2023 Peoples film The Caregiver as a branded original, and the couple has also made movies for Lifetime and BET. But Tubi, with its growing reputation as a haven for independent Black filmmakers, is clearly a place where their films can thrive.
They’ve made all of those accomplishments while remaining somewhat removed from the local film community, even after nearly six years in Vegas. “We tried to reach out to other filmmakers, and they were a little standoffish, which I understand,” Bobby says of their arrival in town. “We just stay in our own lane.” That lane includes a stable of actors who make repeat appearances in the couple's productions, only some of whom are based in Vegas. “We use people over and over again, because that’s all we get who audition locally,” Bobby says.
The couple’s operation is national, though, with actors recruited from around the country and shoots in Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and California, in addition to Vegas. There’s little downtime between productions, and the two are always moving from writing to shooting to editing and back again, with a creative collaboration that’s as close as their personal relationship. “We make sure that we can incorporate each others’ ideas, and we make sure that each one of us are heard when we’re pitching ideas,” Renee says. “He’s more on the technical side; I’m more on the talent side.”
With such a rapid creative pace, there’s little time to look back. “The movie we did last week is probably better than the movie we did last month,” Bobby says. “The movie we do next month will be better than the movie we did this month.”
Still, there are certain Peoples movies that stand out, and Bobby mentions The Caregiver as well as Taboo: The Unthinkable Act as audience favorites. “Vegas Vixens did not get the recognition that it should have,” Renee says of their 2024 film about a murdered escort and subsequent investigation that lead to the exposure of a criminal empire.
The couple is always looking to the future, whether that’s establishing a nonprofit organization to train the next generation of filmmakers, or hoping to create a more permanent physical studio to shoot their films. “Every movie, we try to grow,” Renee says, and the growth opportunities for this couple look to be wide open.
The Peoples' latest film, "The Act of Betrayal," was released February 18 on Tubi.
