Creator-led content is being pitched across the entertainment spectrum from TV to micro dramas and even theater. At Advertising Week New York, several panels explored the business stakes: are these partnerships helping creators build IP they control, or mainly giving studios, streamers and brands access to their audiences?
Digiday spoke with three agency and media execs, two creators, and a creator economy lawyer about how these deals are financed and distributed, who owns the resulting IP, and what makes partnerships work for both brands and creators. They also warn that Hollywood’s rush to replicate hits like Obsession and Backrooms could produce a spate of poor-quality, under-developed creator-led projects in the next few years.
Akshay Mehta, CEO of the Whalar Group’s creator-led Lighthouse Studios, worked with Awesomeness Films almost a decade ago, when production companies and studios were first experimenting with the creator economy. At the time, he said, studios were solely focused on renting or buying creators’ existing audiences for a movie, rather than building a long-term media brand with them.
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