The Garden Harvest: What Teens Actually Think About Movies
Your weekly digest on the intersection of the Creator Economy and Legacy Media.
FRESH CLIPPINGS
What Teens Actually Think About Movies
In light of this week’s deep dive article about recent creator to theatrical successes, this felt like a good moment to zoom out and look at how young people actually think about movies right now.
If you’re a reader of Matt Belloni’s What I’m Hearing newsletter, then you’re probably familiar with his annual (and very unscientific) survey of LA teens to get a sense of the movie theater world.
Well, in response to it, Kevin Goetz, the CEO of Screen Engine, recently performed an actual study of 200 teenagers aged 17 and 18 from across the country, and the findings are worth sitting with for anyone thinking seriously about the future of theatrical entertainment.
A few things stand out:
Franchise fatigue is real, but not in the way studios might hope to dismiss it. Established IP remains the primary draw to theaters, with the highest anticipation this summer around Toy Story 5 and Minions and Monsters. But these kids are increasingly vocal about burnout. They viewed Marvel’s reduced output as a positive development for quality control, for example, and live-action remakes landed particularly badly. One respondent put it plainly: “Hollywood is hurting if that’s the best that they can do.”
The distrust of Hollywood as an institution runs deep. These kids specifically rejected what they described as studio corporate greed, oversaturation, and cynical content decisions. The idea that a Hollywood movie carries some kind of glamorous connotation simply does not register with this generation, which is a BIG shift to how Hollywood was generally perceived before. As we all know, ,reators don’t feel like institutions (at least not yet…). They feel like people, which is exactly the kind of trust that studios are figuring out how to manufacture.
Stars matter less than the industry would like to believe. So many conversations still revolve around attaching talent to unlock financing, but content and concept consistently outranked star power in deciding whether to see a film for these young people. Oversaturation here as well was cited as an active deterrent, actually, with several respondents naming specific actors (Chris Hemsworth, Pedro Pascal) they now avoid because of how frequently they appear in movies. Directors, with the exception of Nolan and Tarantino, did not register at all.
The landscape is changing, and if Hollywood's perception among young people is shifting, that's not a death sentence. It's a brief. These kids love going to the movies, and theatrical, against all odds, is doing well. The Screen Engine study makes clear that the job for those of us in legacy media is simply to give them something worth showing up for.
Convergence Gets Its Own Conference
Press Publish LA is going on right now in LA (more on that below), which is a convergence conference between creators and Hollywood hosted by Colin & Samir. Now, there’s a conference being set up by the legacy side as well.
In one of the clearest points of convergence yet, the Hollywood Reporter and Access Media are launching UP NEXT: The Creator IP Market in Los Angeles. It’s being billed as the first event of its kind designed to bring digital creators, studios, streamers, broadcasters, talent agencies, brands, and buyers into the same room for dealmaking and programming.
The framing from THR’s editor-in-chief is worth quoting directly: digital innovators continue to fuel studio talent pipelines, drive brand marketing strategies, and redefine who becomes a star. That is not the language of a trade publication dipping a cautious toe into a new trend. It is an acknowledgment that the creator economy is now central to how Hollywood actually operates.
The language from Access Media president Ferne Cohen goes even further. She describes some of the most valuable and culturally relevant IP in the world as now emerging from creator-led communities, and frames the event as a serious business marketplace rather than a networking reception with panels attached.
UP NEXT is acknowledging the convergence, but also building dedicated infrastructure around it. The fact that The Hollywood Reporter, the trade that has covered the traditional entertainment industry for decades, is co-hosting it, says something about how far this has come.
Roku Makes a Big Bet on Creators
Roku is launching a dedicated creator destination on its platform and adding a slate of new FAST channels from creators including Prof G Podcast, iShowSpeed, Jesser, and the Stokes Twins. The reasoning from Roku’s head of content Lisa Holme is worth paying attention to:
We can deliver an audience you are not already reaching on YouTube. Search traffic for creator content on Roku has been climbing, meaning people are actively looking for this programming on their televisions and not always finding it. Roku’s argument is that the living room audience and the YouTube audience are not always the same people, and that a creator with 10 million subscribers on YouTube still has untapped reach on connected TV.
That is a compelling case as Roku is essentially positioning itself as the place where that blur between YouTube and TV content becomes a feature rather than a problem, aggregating creator content alongside Peacock, HBO Max, and other partners into a single browseable destination.
The advertiser signal is also worth noting. Holme specifically called out growing demand not just from audiences but from brands, which suggests the creator FAST channel economics are starting to work in ways that make the investment worthwhile for the platform.
Roku may not have YouTube’s scale, but it has something YouTube is still building toward: a clean, TV-first experience with deep integrations across every major streaming app. For creators thinking about distribution beyond their primary platform, that is a real offer.
GARDEN VIEW
This is an awesome doc about Colin & Samir building the Press Publish conference in New York.
Timely, since the LA edition is occurring as we speak, and fellow gardener Mitch Camarda is on the ground. He’ll have a great rundown to share soon.
HARVEST QUOTE
“I want to let the internet decide rather than a room full of executives.”
— Wesley Wang, creator and writer-director known for the viral short nothing, except everything when talking about his new production company, Wesley Wang Media.
No explanation necessary.
Have a great weekend…
Very interesting article.
The industry is truly changing… Good by to Hollywood’s golden years; welcome to all new creators!
Keep it going! 👍🏻
Industry needs to pay attention to the shift around "names." Audiences are voting at the box office and they aren't voting for A-lists.