The Garden Harvest: Hollywood's New Role
Your weekly digest on the intersection of the Creator Economy and Legacy Media.
Before we start, an announcement for our LA-based subscribers. Ben Odell (CEO, 3Pas Studios) and Akshay Mehta (CEO, Lighthouse Studios) will be in conversation on building at the collision of legacy Hollywood and the creator economy this coming Tuesday, July 28 at 5pm. The event will take place at The Lighthouse Campus. Make sure to sign up here.
FRESH CLIPPINGS
Hollywood’s New Role in Culture
Reid Litman, the Global Director & Lead on Ogilvy Pulse, and Warner Bailey, the Founder and Host of Assistants vs. Agents, recently wrote a great piece together on bridging the gap between Hollywood and creators. Most importantly, they did it with a genuine focus on finding where the opportunities lie for the next generation.
It starts with data: Gen Z now makes up about 40% of moviegoers, up from 34% in 2019. They’re the largest audience segment, with attendance among the group up significantly over the last year. However, this is not really growth, but a shift in share of what’s becoming a smaller market.
In this environment, where one demographic has such an outsized impact on the success of a title, how do you operate?
Reid and Warner concentrate on discovery. 63% of Gen Z now discovers long-form content through social clips before engaging with the actual movie or show. As they explain, the clip is the new trailer, review, and often the recommendation, all in one.
Hence, the new role of Hollywood.
Since legacy media can’t create cultural relevance any longer, i.e. young audiences don’t look towards studios to tell them what matters, the job shifts from creating the cultural capital to building alongside it.
They go on: Gen Z assigns the meaning through clips, commentary, edits, memes, and shared language. As we know, all of that technically happens outside of the traditional system.
The role then becomes “recognizing that momentum early and building with it instead of trying to manufacture it.”
Ok. But what does that look like in practice? Warner and Reid have some examples:
Bringing creators into campaigns as partners, hiring fan editors, and building alongside communities rather than marketing to them.
In other words, the people who are best suited to create this cultural capital are not executives, but the fans who are participating in it already.
They leave us with some advice:
Prioritize participation over passive viewing
Build worlds audiences can help shape long before release
Invest in fan communities as creative partners, not just marketing channels
Design every release to feel like a moment worth leaving the house for
Yes, this requires a different way of thinking. But building for convergence is a better bet than fighting over audiences.
Case In Point
Something happened recently related to Backrooms which is an example that illustrates this new reality. And no, this isn’t another post about why the movie succeeded. Here, I want to focus specifically on the nature of the IP itself.
In short: nobody owns it.
If you’re like me and work in legacy media, you’ve probably optioned material. For those who are less familiar, those deals, in simple form, are you as a producer exclusively purchasing the option to produce the material from a writer, etc. And in that same deal, there’s a determined purchase price (typically a range based on budget) which the buyer will pay the writer for the rights to the material.
In even simpler terms, a writer creates something. A studio buys it off them. And then the studio charges an audience for access to the thing.
In certain cases, this can work similarly with creators, but whom do you buy Backrooms from? The audience itself?
This story is incredible: A Reddit user posted that someone had pulled their Backrooms-inspired artwork after a complaint filed on behalf of A24 Films LLC. Kane Parsons, the director himself, saw the thread and commented that he was looking into it and that it should not be happening (imagine that!). By Friday, A24 had issued a public statement, sharing on the official Backrooms X account that online creators "have every right to tell their own version of the story."
The kicker: “A24 clarified that it claims no ownership over the yellow wallpaper, the original post that started it all, or the community works built around it since.”
Going back to what Reid and Warner wrote about, the new Hollywood studio has to build alongside the fans, not cut them out. A24 could still do movie after movie on Backrooms, and fans would 100% go see them. But the nature of the partnership is collaboration, not buying the creators out.
Once again, this doesn’t mean it’s over for studios. It just means their role is a bit different than before.
Is This an Opportunity for Producers?
Yes.
Earlier this year, we wrote about the new producer class emanating from the creator economy. Today, it feels as relevant as ever.
I was reminded of it because this week, Colin McRae, the Director of Content at Viral Nation and Founder of CMAC Media, published a really interesting post about what the creator economy is missing.
And it’s obviously not creators. It’s builders. The producers and operators who will help turn creators into the next generation of entertainment companies.
Colin explains that the industry doesn't need producers in the traditional sense, but rather producers who think differently, simply because the job is changing.
Before, it felt like you could make a great piece of content and that was that. But, as he explains, it’s no longer enough. Now, you have to think about what it can become.
The producers who thrive will know how to build an audience around the work, grow the IP beyond a single release, and help turn stories into full blown businesses.
At the end of the day, there will be more and more creators, increased platform competition, and money flowing into entertainment. And in that environment, the people who know how to help creators build something bigger than just content are then ones who will win.
GARDEN VIEW
Unusual, but decided to repost last week’s video in case you missed it because it perfectly complements the Backrooms story above.
HARVEST QUOTE
"While it is fun to pit companies against one another — I am guilty of this as anyone — Netflix and YouTube can thrive operating in their respective lanes"
— Bloomberg entertainment journalist Lucas Shaw on the increasingly talked about Netflix vs. YouTube rivalry
Who would have thought?
Have a great weekend…