YouTube Ambitions and Hollywood Overreaction

Welcome to the Bird Ccast, the flagship podcast of oververall Deals. I'm your friend David Peerce, and today on the show we're going to talk about YouTube. and specifically the way in which YouTube is taking over Hollywood Over the last couple of weeks, two movies you may have heard of, Backrooms and Obsession have become genuine box office success stories, despite the fact or maybe because of the fact that they were both made by people who came up as creators and particularly on YouTube Plus there's this movie The Amazing Digital Circus, the Last A, which is just a direct basically lifting of a YouTube video and playing in movie theaters. That over this past weekend was the number five movie in theaters ahead of Star Wars, The Mandalorian and Grogu. This has been a trend for some time. You go back to things like Iron Lung, which was a movie made by a YouTuber known as Markiplier. that movie was a hit. We've started to see more and more creators, creators in this sort of most internety sense begin to take on Hollywood And it's really starting to work. And what I want to know is where is all of this going? Are we about to see a bunch of new people get their shot in Hollywood? What does it even mean to get your shot in Hollywood when you've built a huge audience online? And is the future just watching YouTube videos on giant screens while we eat popcorn Julia Alexander, a media correspondent at Puck and my former Verge colleague is going to come on the show and talk about all of that and lots more But first, here's everything else happening on the Verge today. This is ninety secondeconds on the Verge for Thursday, june eleventh, twenty twenty six It's World Cup Day. Today is the first day of the world's biggest sports tournament, which means I will be getting essentially no work done for the next five weeks or so In the U.S, as with all sports streaming, watching the World Cup is far too complicated. But Fox Sports and Fox One have all of the games, if you pay for that in one way or another, and you can also see them on Pacock in Spanish. It's not quite that simple but it's almost that simple And as the Virgers Andrew Webbsher points out today, it's still not clear where we're all supposed to go to talk about the games. Sports Twitter used to be a thing, but it's long gone And we need a new one stat Please, Meanwhile, IFixit did a tearown of the Trump phone and confirmed what we already knew and have known for a very long time. It's just a ripo. It's a ripo off of the HTC U twenty four Pro, specifically, with a couple of teeny tiny changes to the battery and the chipset. HTC used to be a big name in smartphones, but most of the company was sold to Google a while back So I agree with the Virges' Don Preston, whose theory is that HTC probably contracted with a third party manufacturer to make the U twenty four, and the Trump mobile team basically called the same folks and said, like, yeah, we'll have what they're having D twenty four Pro by the way Very much made in China Finally, Apple and Google both added support for Thread one point four, an update to the smmart homeome network protocol that is supposed to make it easier to get all of your devices on a single network all communicating with one another. I say supposed to, because right now the Apple TV implementation is in developer beta, and the Virg' Genui couldn't even get the Google TV streamer to work at all. Such is the slow, steady progress of this market. But it'll work eventually You can read more about all of this at the Vverge d. com that is ninety seconds on the Verge for june eleven Julia Alexander, welcome back to the V firstcast. Thank you so much for having me. I love being back on the Virgecast So we need to talk about the young people. this is what we're here for But my first question is, have you seen either backrooms or obsession yet? These are like the new YouTube turned Hollywood craze movies? I have not seen either one. Have you seen either one I haven't se either one. I think the last movie I saw in theaters was Scream sevenh. So this feels like the great next extension of it, though, I really feel like there's there's a definite line in the sand of ages, whether you went to the movie theater the last couple of weeks to see sccream or you went to see backrooms in obsession. And you and I are unfortunately both on the wrong side of that line The trend here is fascinating to me, right? We have all at once bunch of I'm reluctant to call them YouTubers. I actually want to talk about whether it's fair to call these people YouTubers, but you have a bunch of people who really sort of cut their teeth on YouTube and on social platforms who are not just making Hollywood movies, right? Like that pipeline is interesting and I want to talk about it The fact that not only are they making these movies, they're enormous unneexpected runaways successes How are you thinking about the large trend at play here I'm so excited that you asked that because I think there's a lot of hyperbole about what this means I think there's a group of traditional studio executives in Hollywood who are in their sixties and seventies who see this and think, great, the next MCU is just like the YouTuber cinematic universe. And we're going to throw a ton of money at YouTubers with big audiences and Mr. Beast will win an Oscar for us in five years. And then I think There's the actual conversation, which is just this idea that there was a group of talent who instead of going through a gate kept system that was traditional Hollywood and the traditional studio system, who came up through that kind of creative pipeline just decided to use the interternet as a distribution platform that we all knew it to be and started posting really great content on YouTube built up followings and then converted a percentage of that audience base into theater goers. And I think the distinction is if you give audiences the ability to have really unique original content in this kind of sea of oversaturated franchise slop They wille out turn out, I should say. And also if you can combine that with these relationships that they've built with creators and their channels over the past decade, the past seven years, the past five years, they will also continue to turn out Okay. Yeah, it seems like the right way to think about it is not we should just put YouTube on movie theater screens. although there is some of that happening and we should talk about that too. But there's just this this turn, it seems like happening where if I'm If I'm Kane Parsons, right? I'm a teenager who has cool creative ideas and wants to go make things I can A make them and publish them in public and be develop a real proven audience for it, whichich to me is like there's something in that turn and then you have a studio like A twenty four, which I think has gone way out of its way to try to bring up young directors and try to take swings and try to do new things and Like a thing I've seen a lot of actors talk about is it's increasingly hard to get a job in Hollywood if you don't already have a big social following.. And this to me feels to some extent just like of a piece with that where It used to be A twenty four would just have to take a big swing on a completely unproven person But now you're taking a still big swing on somebody who like demonstrably went out and built an audience of people who lik this thing that they made. So at least maybe the sort of the pipeline has not changed. It's just weirdly less of a risk for everybody now. You can look at what eight twenty four did with the Filuppu brothers who were original YouTubers, who I remember covering back in my days at the Verge because they were seeing all their content be demonetized because they would do these really great but graphic mortal combat IRL type videos. and o I remember those. yeah. They were so great. And I remember talking them for a story about how YouTube was demonetizing their content. they didn't know what to do next and they always wanted to be filmmakers within the traditional studio system. which I think is also an important part of this conversation. And they worked with a studio and a distributor like A twenty four who wanted to take these bets. and so they ended up becoming or moving away from YouTube into this kind of again, traditional Hollywood system. And so I think if you look at a Caine Parsons or if we talk about obsession, whatever it might be, the idea that they built up audiences on a platform that they weren't, I would argue, intending to become a Pewdiepie Mr. Be. It was not like they wanted to be YouTubers, but they had a platform that allowed them to find an audience through this free distribution access, which As you know, and we all know is the, you know, the story of the internet Then I think there's the conversation around markarkiplier and iron lg and this idea of I have this audience for the last fifteen years. I'm going to self produce this film. I'm going to kind of basically self finance this film.re distributed it in more than three thousand theaters. And this is the successful story of a YouTuber moving into a film space rather than filmmakers using YouTube as a means to get into that traditional studio system. Okay, so you kind of just half answered one of the questions I was going to ask you, which is Is this moment actually sort of a new phenomenon, right? I think One way to look at this is that it is a lot of this story happening all at once. And so it's just obvious to look at, right? bunch a bunch of new creators who all kind of cut their teeth in the same place. are now making successful movies Put like that, that's extremely not a new phenomenon But there's also one way to look at this that is like, okay, this is the official YouTuber takeover of Hollywood I don't think it's quite that and my sense is you don't either. And that actually there is something to this is This is just a bunch of a long standing trend that just kind of happens to all be happening all at once After this weekend, I called up a few sources who are effectively running or part of development teams within creator centric divisions at all these legacy stududios networks Every company now has one. They're looking at how do we work with talent who are coming from the creator sphere Most of that YouTube, but it may include TikTok, it may include Instagram, whoever it might be. How do we work with them on projects that we both want to distribute under our banner? So that could be a film like A twenty four and Jason Blum over at Blumhouse, that could be a streaming show that might go to a Netflix, a Hulu, or how do we work with them on developing original IP for their own channels and what we're investing in is basically the channels and saying that we think we can continue growing this and it's going to become a portion of our business And there's a component of that strategy, which feels like the multich channel networks of twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. Totally. The full screens of the world and the Maker stududios In many ways, sources I talk to are like they were just early to it and now we've got this kind of understanding of what YouTube and YouTubers are from executives So I think there's a component of all these different excs trying to figure out what YouTubers are to them. And I also I also think there is this component though Creatives have always found interesting ways to get around the traditional gatekeeping system. You can think about the independent film scene in the nineties, obviously Quentin Tarantino era. You could also think about Mike Judge and Beavis and Buthead and that being shared on the back endnd of either the South Park or the Simpsons tape that then people started watching and it got around to people in Hollywood. And so although the distribution mechanics have changed with technology advances, the idea of creators and creatives coming in from these separate or alternative pipelines is not new I think you toobe, to your point, David about having a built in audience YouTube just comes with very public subscriber and follower numbers and engagement metrics and sentiment metrics around the type of content that people are doing that then lead studio executives to say, okay, we think we can work with this creator on this project That way of looking at it feels like a total context collapse of how all of this stuff works in a way that I'm actually really sort of surprised by because I think The way I was looking at this is like, okay. YouTube Great way to get lots of audience It's kind of terrible to way to make a lot of money, right? traditional Hollywood system very good at making money Not as good as it as they used to be, but still very good at making money. Like they know how to put it on the screen and sell tickets and like That is a way to go and make something with a much bigger budget and ideally make lots more money So my assumption has always been that even for somebody like Markiplier who essentially just made a sort of bigger budget version of the stuff that he makes on YouTube and is betting that his audience will sort of turn out for that in theaters, and that worked out great The move there is just Here is another way to make a lot more money in a much more sort of traditional, understandable, stable way But what you're describing is like the YouTube and theatrical worlds just running directly into each other And maybe the difference between those two things just completely disappearing entirely I think a lot about the upfronts, which is of course, when all the brands come together into New York City and they tell advertisers why they should advertise on the NFL and why they should advertise on Dick Wolf shows. There was a great The only two things on television. The only two things onvion Dick Wolf shows. I go directly from watching my New Orleans Saints Louise to watching police win in any Wolf show. That seem Somet with Chicago at the beginning as that it. Yeah. I think a lot about it was either I think it was two years ago. It was when Amazon had announced Beast games, which was Mr. Beast's competition show based on kind of Squid game. And it was this hundred million dollars reported deal. They were investing in Mr. Bes to make this original content for Amazon That same week, it was like the next day or two days later, Mrter Beast was on stage with Neil Mohan, who's the CEO of YouTube, and said, whyy would I ever leave YouTube Like why would I ever go and do something exclusively in a Hollywood system when my audience is here And the larger part of that conversation, that you can see play out. And I'm going to use Mr. Beast not as the only creator, but I think as kind of you know, this large creator has all these opportunities available to him as a example of what may happen with creators. If you look at what he then does over the next couple years, he's publicly talking to Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg about how he uses their platforms to monetize the same video, but cut for kind of different audiences. And I think what we're entering, which is really fun, is this period of true non exclusivity for top creators who go like, I'm going to go make a movie with A twenty four because I have this filmmaker, talent inside of me, I really want to explore and I came up on YouTube. But I'm also going to continue producing long form content or short form content for these platforms and monetizing it because I understand that It takes years to develop a project in Hollywood. It may or may not go anywhere. Tons of as you know, David, tons of projects don't actually go anywhere. And so I'm not going to give up the advantage of scale and reach on a platform like YouTube, even though I'm not going to rely purely on the monetization from adSense or whatever it might be. So the future of being a creator within this world might look like you have an overall deal with universal pictures or with twentieth century Fox or whatever you're doing, you're focusing on developing projects every few years where you're doing this big, big, big push into the mainstream. And then you've got an extended podcast that you're monetizing through Patreon. and then you're doing stuff with Instagram brand deals via Reels. I that moment of Hollywood understandably saying We're not going to have the type of star structure we had in the thirties and forties through the nineties where we have a talent that we really rely on that we're going to pay a ton of money to have exclusive Christopher Nolan movies. But instead we're going to try and tap into the converting of an audience that we are not. Sing come to theaters that we are losing out to YouTube is where that merge kind of happens That's interesting. That also stries me as the end of a very particular kind of celebrity too. Like I think about we still have this group of moovie stars, like true capital M movie stars TV shows, they don't really have YouTube channels, they don't do all of this other stuff. And in a lot of ways, that sort of mystique and the fact that we are not so overrun by them is part of their power, right? Like Leonardoiaprio makes a movie and then kind of disappears. And there is something that makes him power in that and it feels like The next generation of people will not interact with the world and their art in that way at all. That in fact, everybody is going to be everywhere all the time because that's just the business works I think there's a percentage of and I'll use the term auteur who's still going to come up and say I'm interested in pursuing more traditional art forms and I want to spend my time working with truly great visionaries. and I want to spend my time thinking about my career as an actor, my career as a director, my career as a writer Timothy Sy Chhallay is probably he's probably like the example of that right now. Timothy Chhay, Michael B Jordan kind of within that, where they're really hyper focused on choosing the projects they want to work with att the same time It's a very select percentage of people. And you know, Timothy Chalamay grew up in New York City around a lot of playwrights.'s Michael B. Jordan, who worked very hard to get to where he is, had this early break on Friday night lights. And so the ability for them in their late twenties thirties to then say, I'm going to focus squarely on this comes from a place of kind of proven talent I think if you are, I think about Steven Spielberg, saying if you're a young kid with access to an iPhone, just start uploading. L you might as well just start shooting and trying to find things that way It's funny that the film system is coming into this now because if you look at the TV system, if you look at broad city, if you look at high maintenance, if you look at insecure I mean, like Isa Ray, Abby Jacobson, Alana Glazer, Ben Sinclair, who did highigh maintenance, All of them came from Vimeo YouTube They were all producing for the web and then people like Amy Poher or people like Casey Boyys at HBO said, These are great, and we think these can work as extended TV shows And so now I think you're looking at Hollywood studios saying, okay, well, we weren't seeing full feature films necessarily on YouTube that we think could convert to a theatrical release in four thousand five hundred theaters. But we are seeing talent who has expressed interest in doing that, who we then look at the script, we go through the traditional process of green lightighting a project and say, okay, also if we can convert percent of these two million subscribers into theater goers, we might have an ability to kind of bring back those younger audiences to theaters Let's talk about the bringing back younger audiences. because I think the last time you were on the show, we tried to fix movie theaters. We did. And I would say given what has happened since then, we kind of did it. We did. there was there was us on the first cast and then everything got better in the theatrical business. So like you're welcome, everybody do think One of the big bets going on here is that young people want to go out in the world and hang out with each other, right? Like one other example we haven't really talked about is the ammazing Digital Circus, which is this incredibly successful animated YouTube series that is just putting its finale in theaters for two weeks and then putting it on YouTube fascinating different way of thinking about distribution because all that is is not we made a new project. It's not we're doing a new thing, a new way. It's that we think a bunch of amazing digital circus fans probably want to go hang out with each other and watch this together. And u That to me also feels Right? And there's something, there's something in the turn there that is like not that many years ago, there was this question of is anyone ever going to go to movie theaters A againain, we all have giant TVs. There's all this day and date stuff happening It feels like there is real energy in the communal experience of movie theaters that is just going to give it a different kind of advantage, even in this world where content is spread across everywhere You know, when things just align perfectly and it creates this moment of true I don't use the term innovation because it's almost a return to what has worked, but it creates this moment of real opportunity I think at the same time that younger audiences who spend a lot of their time on their phones and watching YouTube at home want to be a part of these communal experiences around this shared universe or shared love that they have. happened at the exact same time that exhibitors were like, look Rrooggu's not working We don't know what's going to be working for us anymore. We have We've seen the supply dwindle to the point that Adam Aaron over at MMC Theaters is open to negotiations with Ted Serandos at Netflix, to enemy camps for years I think you have this perfect melding of creators who are saying, We'll be in theaters for two weeks, three weeks. At the same time that exhibitors are going, we need more content. And we want an audience that we are losing out to because they're not showing up for like You know,, I don't know, Marvel twenty five And I think within that world, it creates a really strong incentive for creators who want to find ways to bridge their community who want to find ways to deliver those intimate experiences because that also increases adoration. It helps with other live events they might do. It helps with merchandise selling, It helps keep advertisers coming back to those channels All of them saying we're incentivized to pursue this At the same time that the exhibitors again are going great, and we will work with you, even if it's on a two week basis, even if it's something we don't know from a director or a self publishing production company or a smaller firm that we don't necessarily rely on the way we rely on Universal and Sony I think This moment of experimentation will lead to more investment in some of these opportunities And I think you can also look at how Chains like reggal, chains like AMC have been experimenting over the last couple of years. and you and I talked about this concert film is kind of coming back We saw it with Taylor, we saw it with Billy Eilish. There's a few and who are doing it themselves and are kind of saying we'll work directly with the exhibitors. The creators are now coming to it. We're kind of seeing what Sony with Almo Draft House is doing on the anime side of the equation. And so I think we are seeing theaters find ways into community, into intimate memory to then make it more than just a movie that you could watch at home, which is what Gro Gu I think felt like for a lot of people. it was an extended show. I think there was a Vverge headline that's like, it should have just been a TV show and it is a TV show. And I think it's the perfect melding pot for it right now. I want to talk about YouTube's side of this for just a couple minutes before I let you go because YouTube, while all of this is happening, is desperately trying to make itself the future of Hollywood Right? We have YouTube once again getting back into doing like very official shows with A lS celebrities a thing YouTube has tried seven hundred times in the past and it's doing again. You have YouTube increasingly pushing to make YouTubers like eligible for Emmys. Like YouTube's ambition is to be Hollywood. Like in it that's that is as big as it sounds So if I'm Nil Mohan, like you mentioned, the CEO of YouTube I'm looking at this going Well wait, all of this stuff that's being built on our platform is being taken off of our platform and onto this other thing Do you think if I'm Neil, I'm like, great, this is proof that this product works? orr are they looking at this being like, there's this other thing we need to go figure out how to capture now Killing theaters we're actually feeding theaters now It's a great question. and I come back to a few thoughts on why Neil Mohan doesn't care about losing some attention of the over a couple of weeks to a exhibitor ne is that it ultimately benefits YouTube and the brand around YouTube and this idea that YouTube is a home for premium talent that can convert to a theatrical experience, but that Fremium content has always been on YouTube and where they started And his whole thing that he's thinking about and you can tie this to the idea of premium filmmakers, you can tie it to the NFL, you can tie it to the Oscars is just to convert as much, much, much connected TV or CTV ad spending to YouTube. So as we see kind of the advertisers move away from traditional linear spending into connected TV, which is a combination of digital and streaming, it's basically going to be split across all these different platforms. You have Netflix, you have Disney. and YouTube wants a larger share of that premium ad spend So they look for premium content But YouTube also has the benefit of reverse power laws So whereas companies like Netflix or Hulu rely on that top one percent of content to drive ninety percent of all viewing, YouTube is reverse. So they have, let ninety nine percent of these niche content topics drive so much of the viewership for creators. And so the idea that a couple of creators go out and make big Hollywood films That doesn't impact YouTube's bottom line. It's not a competitor to YouTube in terms of how user behavior operates between a theatrical film and kind of what YouTube operates as. And it certainly is not going to impact YouTube's growth. And I think ultimately, that is where YouTube is coming from, where if I'm Neil Mohan, I look at all these amazing storylines that are happening in the press, which is just YouTube is minting the next generation of filmmakers. And that is something that you can then bring to an upfront presentation next year and go like, this is where talent is coming from. It's no longer coming from the studio system It is coming from YouTube. And so I think it's a win win for him because YouTube never competed with theaters and now they can argue that YouTube is the future of theaters while also being home to the future of premium entertainment I just think like, do you want to be in the business of distribution if this thing which is this idea of this trend doesn't take off. And I think that's the other important part of this equation Sometimes movies just do well. And horror movies in particular get younger audiences out more often on average. They are more communal. they've always been more communal. They have lower budgets. That's the other part of this equation. They're very successful because they have very low budgets. do less marketing because of the built in audience And so you have a couple of Guine hits that are really remarkable. Does that mean that people only want to go see these and not the Odyssey? Who knows also think though Film in general is a game of numbers. And so if you're a studio and you've got a slate of twenty one films, eighteen to twenty one films, on average, like five to six of those movies are going to do well. and the other ones are kind of going to do meh. And the same is true for YouTuing creators. It's not because they are a lesser class of creative, they prove when they're not. and it's not because there is more expectation that all those audiences will convert It's just a game of numbers. Right now, a film is doing really well that is powered by YouTuber And there are going to be films that are powered by YouTubers who are not going to do really well. And the more that YouTube becomes ubiquitous with just media and film as opposed to new media or new film, it's going to kind of go back into that traditional system. And so I think if you're YouTube, the question is, would you rather be known for minting the next generation of filmmakers without having to invest in them in the slightest and just saying they're home on our platform Or would you rather try to figure out the cost of running? ambition business at a time when that's still uncertain. I think if you're neeil, you just go, we're going to take the easy way out Yeah, I think that's right. But The flip side of that Hollywood is going to overreact to this in some way. right? think I think we agree that this is not a brand new trend. I actually think Broad City is like a perfect example of exactly how this has gone before. It's just we're sort of doing feature films instead of TVs. But like the pipeline has been around for a long time It's very cool that this works this way. And yet there is something about this moment and in particular, these two movies Backrooms and obsession happening simultaneously. It's like back session is the new Barbenheimer for twenty twenty six. Hollywood is going to overreact to this in it seems to be one of two ways. either We're going to see a bunch of new YouTubers get deals like this and start to leverage both their audience and their creative. and we're going to see like a whole generation of people given the chance to make feature films based on the stuff that they've made on social platforms Or we're going to start to see a lot of movie theaters play YouTube videos for us. Which of those would you bet on being the overreaction from Hollywood here? Or is there some other thing I haven't even thought about? I could not agree with you M. I think we're about to see a bunch of executives all their executives. studios say There's a one to one in YouTube audience to theatrical turnout, ignoring the fact that Blumhouse has a huge fan base built into its theatrical film, ignoring the fact that A twenty four has a big fan baseil into its distribution. And so I think you're going see a lot of Hollywood executives say, greatreat, there's a one to one relationship between subscriber numbers on the channel and and box office figures And I think ultimately, it is the type of content, it is the type of fandom. it is the type of communal event and intimacy that those fans want. It is the type of creator who can make a really good film. Beuse at the end of the day, these are good movies. It's not like they're terrible movies that did well. They're good movies. And so I think the It'll be dumbed down to subscriber number is box office as opposed to saying there's a lot of intricate things that need to work that all need to come together for this to play out, including when it's released, heading into the summer, what type of genre it is, the production budget, what they need from a marketing spend perspective, all the boring stuff about filmmaking that makes it extremely expensive And so I think Hollywood will overreact in the most Hollywood way sounds about right. I mean, I'll take it. I will absolutely take lotots of young interesting creators getting a swing at making a big movie over like the Alamo Draft House running a marathon of Mr. Beast videos. Like if I have to pick an outcome, give me the first one for sure appach it brother could not agree more All right, Juliet, thank you as always for being here. It's good to see you. Thank you That's it for the Vircast. Thank you as always for watching. Thank you to Julia for being here If you have thoughts, feelings, questions, if you saw backrooms or obsession or the amazing digital circus, or any of these movies and theaters and you want to talk about it, I want to hear about it. Call the hotline eight six Virge one one, send us an email, Virgecast to the Verge. com. We absolutely love hearing from you. And as always, the best thing you can do to support everything we're up to here is to subscribe to the Verge. Not only will you get all of our podcasts, including this one ad free You'll get all of our exclusive newsletters, all of our coverage of WWDC and everything else happening this week All of it with one subscription to Vverge dot com slash subscribe The first cast is a Vird production and part of the Vox Media podcast Network This episode is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Lararchuck and Aon Loccasio. We will see you tomorrow in