The Just For Laughs comedy festival, a once-dominant stand-up comedy showcase for Hollywood, is set to return under new owner ComediHa! next year.
Following a post-bankruptcy restructuring, an 11-day Just For Laughs festival is in the works for a July 16 to 27, 2025 run. With JFL president Bruce Hills no longer with the company, the role of top comedy curator for the English-language edition will go to newly-promoted head of programming Nick Brazao.
A 15-year veteran with JFL, Brazao held key positions in programming management and talent development and forged ties to American comedians and their agents and managers as the festival expanded its global reach.
The planned 2025 edition of Just For Laughs will include the return of the annual ComedyPRO conference. The summer 2024 edition of JFL was scrapped as ComediHa! completed its purchase of assets from former parent Groupe Juste Pour Rire as part of a recent court-directed bankruptcy protection in June 2024.
Resurrecting the English language JFL festival under a restructured Just For Laughs Entertainment Group was helped by Loto-Québec signing on as a key sponsor of the 2025 edition. “This irreplaceable support from Loto-Québec consolidates our position as a leader in the comedy industry and allows us to prepare a memorable edition for 2025,” Sylvain Parent-Bédard, president and CEO of Just For Laughs, said in a statement on Friday.
When Quebec City-based ComediHa! first announced its pickup of Just For Laughs assets, Parent-Bedard said his live comedy show production company looked to offer “diverse entertainment experiences to our Quebec, Canadian and global audiences.”
The comeback strategy at ComediHa! includes taking over in part from Just For Laugh’s former owners as a way for American and other global stand-up comedy artists to perform internationally and take advantage of touring concert revenues.
Just for Laughs got its start in the 1980s as an annual festival where Los Angeles and New York talent scouts discovered the next big thing for Hollywood sitcoms and movie roles. But the rise of the internet and social media as discovery platforms for self-promoting comedians has pushed the JFL festival down the assembly line for nascent comedy talent.
The Montreal festival, a flagship event for the city’s summer cultural season, also lost revenues at the height of the pandemic and had been impacted by reduced marketing and programming budgets at major U.S. networks and streamers.