{"id":428848,"date":"2026-08-10T15:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T15:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/428848\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T15:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T15:02:09","slug":"hollywood-and-creators-how-two-industries-are-becoming-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/428848\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood and Creators: How Two Industries Are Becoming One"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s a warm morning in May, and thousands of YouTubers, TikTokers, Facebook posters, and Instagram influencers have flooded the Fox Studio Lot in Century City, Los Angeles. They\u2019re being ushered through manicured sidewalks by the hosts of this gathering, creator-industry whisperers Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry<\/a>. Winding past murals of the Simpsons and Marilyn Monroe, the group eventually finds itself in a rough re-creation of New York City, as imagined by Samsung, Canon, and Google, among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCorporate sponsors pursuing creators isn\u2019t new. But Rosenblum and Chaudry hosting a summit on this century-old lot marks a new era of partnership. Social media has long been a place for studios to find talent \u2014 see Kane Parsons\u2019 Backrooms and Curry Barker\u2019s Obsessions. Now, they\u2019re investing in creators to build audiences on the platforms where they\u2019re already thriving. \u201cFor the first time, the Hollywood system is recognizing internet storytellers as viable partners,\u201d Chaudry says. Or, as Billy Parks, the new head of the Fox Creator Studios, recently put it, \u201cThe creator economy isn\u2019t separate from Hollywood. It\u2019s increasingly becoming the future of entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA COUPLE OF WEEKS LATER, I\u2019m in Parks\u2019 office at Fox. He\u2019s only had this gig for three months, but he\u2019s spent a decade and a half working closely with creators. When he met Fox Entertainment CEO Rob Wade last year, Wade had just announced his intent to start an arm of the business to invest in digital natives. \u201cI was very excited about what it could be, but I was also a little scared about legacy media trying to do this,\u201d Parks says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe venture is something altogether new: For 50 percent of the revenue earned from the content they make together, Fox Creator Studios lends support for ambitious projects creators might not be able to do on their own. \u201cWhat we offer them is capital, so they can go faster and make more things,\u201d Parks explains. Fox also helps sell ads against the content \u2014 as they do for all of the shows they produce \u2014 and, when asked, sets up creators with experienced producers. So far they\u2019ve signed 10 deals, including with comedian Tom Segura, influencer Josh Richards, and race-car driver Emelia Hartford.<\/p>\n

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\n\tFox, along with every other studio, has been pulling talented people from YouTube to create and star in shows for years. What makes this different, Parks says, is the end goal isn\u2019t necessarily to discover the next sitcom star. \u201cIf our wins were only counted by finding cool people on the internet and bringing them into broadcast, I think we would lose,\u201d he says. Instead, they\u2019re finding people with, say, a promising single season of a TikTok show and combining forces so they can take off on that platform. \u201cWe\u2019re like, \u2018We want to help you with Season Two, and Three, and beyond.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNot everyone, however, wants to be bound to a Hollywood studio. Take, for example, Rhett McLaughlin and Charles \u201cLink\u201d Neal. In 2006, when the two childhood friends from North Carolina started posting videos on their Rhett & Link YouTube channel, they were twentysomething aspiring filmmakers just looking for a creative outlet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tSam Reich, owner of Dropout Media, hosting the game show \u2018Game Changer.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKate Elliott<\/p>\n

\n\tBut it quickly turned into a real business. In 2011, they launched an IFC reality show, Commercial Kings, and relocated to Los Angeles. When that was canceled after one season, they doubled down on making their own videos. \u201cThat\u2019s when we invented Good Mythical Morning out of Rhett\u2019s garage,\u201d says Neal, referring to the daily talk show with segments like Oreo-flavor rankings or dating red flags. Now in its 15th year,\u00a0 it boasts 3,000 episodes and almost 20 million subscribers. Their flagship shows are available on Netflix, and they even have a channel on some streaming platforms that plays their videos nonstop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tFor McLaughlin and Neal, handing over power to a corporation is a nonstarter. In their experience, when someone offers cash to \u201cport your audience over here,\u201d as Neal puts it, fans are often turned off. \u201cIf it feels different in any way, [the creator] might be screwed,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t take away what\u2019s working.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAS HOLLYWOOD HAS CIRCLED around creators, the creators themselves have built their own infrastructure. Sam Reich is the owner of Dropout, a subscription-only service that offers a handful of independently created properties, including the popular game show Game Changer and the Dungeons & Dragons live-play Dimension 20, which sold out Madison Square Garden last year. Reich uses word of mouth to find most of the comedians to join his loyal band of regulars. \u201cThis [creator] ecosystem caters not exclusively to people who are very funny and talented, but even more to people who are good hustlers and entrepreneurs,\u201d Reich says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a former boot-camp gym a few blocks from the airport in Burbank, Dhar Mann<\/a> has used that kind of entrepreneurial hustle to build a one-stop shop for content creation. Mann, 42, got his start posting scripted videos with a moral tilt on Facebook in 2018. When the pandemic hit, he leased this property and built out sets, including one modeled on a classroom. That move proved prophetic. Bringing in child actors to play out quandaries about school life led Mann to shift to YouTube, where younger audiences connected with the content.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s since brought on hundreds of people to work on the content \u2014 including former MTV President Sean Atkins, now his CEO \u2014 essentially creating his own TV studio. \u201cThere\u2019s this thinking that creators are replacing traditional Hollywood, and my belief is [that] the line is disappearing,\u201d he says. \u201cThe real magic comes in when those two groups come together and create something much bigger and much more meaningful.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn conversations around creators in 2026, two movies inevitably come up: Parsons\u2019 Backrooms and Barker\u2019s Obsession<\/a>. In a matter of months, their films have become shorthand for creator-industry-crossover success stories. But still, they had traditional partnerships with studios: Obsession was produced by Blumhouse, and Backrooms had the backing of A24.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tThere was, however, a third horror movie from a YouTube star: Iron Lung, made by Mark Fischbach, better known as Markiplier, which cost roughly $5 million and recouped more than $50 million at theaters. Fischbach, 37, a former biomedical engineering student, got his start posting playthroughs of video games. By 2022, Forbes had listed him as the third-highest-paid creator on YouTube. Because of this revenue stream, he was able to finance Iron Lung entirely himself, and place it in theaters across the country, including in big chains like AMC. And, as he\u2019d hoped, the audiences came with him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tMarkiplier in his self-financed movie \u2018Iron Lung.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhilip Roy<\/p>\n

\n\tChaudry sees studios bringing on creators not just as a way to hedge risky bets; these are people with dedicated audiences who will follow. But the shift, he says, is because they are finally willing to work with creators on their own terms. \u201cThe one thing Hollywood historically has not had, and what has changed in our conversations with studios, is the respect for momentum [in the creator world],\u201d he says. \u201cIf I pitch you an idea, I\u2019m excited about the idea right now. If it takes six months for us to agree on making that idea, I might have moved on.\u201d Yet he doesn\u2019t see creators as replacing the established system. \u201cMy hope is to learn from those people,\u201d he says. \u201cIf both sides are willing to learn from each other, great work will be made.\u201d<\/p>\n