After years of eye-rolling, the industry is finally waking up to the power of the booming creator economy. Is it too late?
www.hollywoodreporter.com
Full article at the link ^
How Hollywood Learned to Love Influencers
After years of eye-rolling, the industry is finally waking up to the power of the booming creator economy. Is it too late?
Taylor Lorenz - Oct. 16th, 2025
This is the year that the power dynamics in Hollywood finally flipped.
The content creator industry, which has been ascendant for decades, finally surpassed traditional Hollywood in terms of clout, cultural capital and, increasingly, size. But as the creator industry is rapidly professionalizing, it’s also facing disruption by the proliferation of AI, the platform landscape is being upended by politics, and livestreaming is rewriting the nature of fame and fandom.
In 2025,
YouTube became the No. 1 streaming platform, surpassing competitors like Netflix and Amazon for the first time. People now watch more YouTube on their TV sets than their phones or any other device, making YouTubers some of the biggest television stars today. Outside of YouTube, the creator economy is now a $250 billion global force. In 2023, Goldman Sachs estimated that the content creator industry would grow to at least $480 billion by 2027. Today, about 67 million people are currently working as full- or part-time creators, with that number projected to balloon to more than 105 million by 2030, according to Goldman Sachs. In the U.S. alone,
content creators contributed $55 billion to the GDP in 2024, equivalent to nearly 500,000 jobs, according to Oxford Economics. Sponsored content deals are expected to surpass $10 billion this year, as more advertisers cut back on traditional media advertising and dive headfirst into influencer marketing. An industry that was once dismissed as teens making low-quality lip-sync videos on YouTube or performing skits on Vine is now a dominant force in media, commerce and culture.
From left: Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, Tubi CEO Anjali Sud and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos
variety.com
popculture.com
www.metacritic.com
...Angela in that green dress in part one though..
deadline.com
www.swirlandthread.com
