September 2026
Nostradamus Perspectives
By Hillevi Gustafson
Follow up from the report - Creator Frenzy in Hollywood
“A buzzy positive story in the struggling LA film industry last year was that the creators were hiring. The Hollywood Reporter even visited Dhar Mann Studios’ 125,000 square foot studio to cover them recruiting film and TV production staff, writers, and legal expertise, including a Fremantle and Amazon Studios head of production, and a controller with a background at major studios. 7 Mann's studio outputs the equivalent of five scripted half-hours a week. It is a Burbank neighbour to Mythical Entertainment, whose studio employs over 100 people, and to Alan Chikin Chow’s scripted Alan’s Universe. Even some Hollywood executives, finding their career plan stymied by the market, are taking the plunge to the creator side.” - From Nostradamus report 2026 - Challenging Projections
This year’s Nostradamus report dove into the new realities of the creator economy and its intersection with the traditional industry. This co-mingling is only deepening as the year goes on. Previous newsletters have looked at the YouTube filmmakers creating box office hits but as Emmy season shows, for Hollywood it is not just about finding the next big director. The traditional industry wants to entice more and more types of creators to come over to their established shores.
Netflix has struck several major deals with creators, among them comedian Kevin Langue and actor/writer Alan Chikin Chow. Dhar Mann Studios struck a deal with Disney+ for a 20-episode series order. No further details were revealed but this follows a deal that Dhar Mann struck with Fox for a 40-episode microdrama earlier this year.
Meanwhile, YouTube is feeling the pressure and has begun offering deals of their own in exchange for keeping their creators exclusively on the platform according to reporting from The Ankler. It is also hard not to connect YouTube's recent investment in Emmy campaigns for some of the platform's most popular creators as a way to incentivize them to stay loyal.
One of those campaigns succeeded in securing an Emmy nomination for the hit show SubwayTakes. Creator Kareem Rahma seems to be staying put on YouTube at least, telling Indiewire “The minute I let go of the idea that I’m doing this so that I can get off the internet is the minute everything became extremely fun and super successful. And that is no shade to other platforms. It’s just I don’t have time to sit around and do development and meetings and this and that. I already have the ideas. I already have the intellectual property. I already have the skills. I already have the team to make it. So that’s what we do. We go make it.”