Brett Cooper — YouTubers Are Taking Over Hollywood

- Guys, I'm so excited to do this episode today because it's always really redeeming when I get to celebrate our generation for something, because I feel like, and I've been a part of this, but you know, gen Z has faced so much rightful criticism over the years for, you know, the laziness, the political ridiculousness, hookup culture, all of the things, whatever it might be. And so it's so amazing when we prove doubters wrong and when we are disruptors and industries and when other Gen Zs then get to celebrate that and learn from that.

And that is exactly what is happening today because officially Gen Z is saving Hollywood baby. And we are here to talk about why and to celebrate that. So if you missed it, a film called Backroom just grossed over $118 million globally. And a film called Obsession, which I believe has been out for three weeks now, has earned over a hundred times its budget. And he might be wondering like, Brett, are you talking about these two random horror movies?

They are not random. They're actually doing crazy well in the theatres. But why we are talking about them is because both of these movies were made by Gen Z YouTubers and they were made with budgets that were way smaller than your typical box office film. Take the new Star Wars movie, which obviously we're gonna talk about today, Mandalorian and Roku, it had a production budget of $160 million that is not including all of the marketing that Disney did on top of that.

And it bumped. And Disney is panicking because this is a really important IP and nobody cares. But these other films are crushing contrary to what people on X are saying. I do not think that it bombed because of quote unquote woke. I think maybe it's because we are just so tired. Like we the universal, we as audience members, we are so tired of Hollywood throwing the same recycled lazy crap in our faces 24 7 instead of just having the creativity and the risk to try something new, which is exactly what these Gen Z YouTubers did.

Now, before we dive into this story, I wanna thank you guys for being here. Thank you for liking, commenting and subscribing. If you wanna stay up to date on everything we're doing here on the channel, make sure to ring that notification bell. Let me know in the comments below if you have gone to see back rooms or obsession. I'm really not a horror film person, but now I think I need to go and support these guys. So let me know what you think.

So the biggest two movies in theatres right now, like I said, were made by YouTubers in their twenties. Yes, you heard that correctly. And what is even crazier is that one of these young men is not mid twenties. No, he is literally 20 years old. Somebody commented and said YouTube to box Office Pipeline is the only career path that makes sense now. Just kidding. Or am I, should I just kidding. Anyway, back to the point.

So the first of these films, this is the one that was made by the 20-year-old. It is called Backroom. It's about a struggling furniture store owner who discovers this like mysterious portal in his basement. It leads to a maze like series of never ending back rooms. He gets sucked into this alternative reality. His employees get stuck there, his therapist comes in to try to rescue him. She also gets stuck there. And this film was directed by a 20-year-old YouTuber.

His name is Kane Barsin, 20 years old. And guys, it's so crazy, this film officially had the largest opening weekend ever for the company. A 24 and a 24 is not some little like po dunk random film production company. They might have been 15 years ago, but they have done Oscar winning productions at this point, biggest opening weekend ever. And it is also officially the biggest debut in history ever, ever, ever for an original horror film.

Plus on top of that, the other accolade is that Cain Parsons is now the youngest director ever to have a number one film at the box office. So that is back rooms. And then next up, the other film that is crushing right now is called Obsession. It was directed by a young man named Curry Barker. He is 26 years old and he is also a YouTuber and a comedian. And this film is about a young man, the nice guy trope. He uses like some occult magic from a novelty shop to get his crush from work to fall in love with him.

It does, but it very quickly turns dark. He realises that her new obsession with him has come with a price. So that's kind of, you know, the twist there. And this part is crazy. So for obsession, Cory Barker shot the film in just three weeks on a $750,000 budget. That is unheard of, literally unheard of. It is almost impossible to do any kind of huge blockbuster film to get a film to theatres for under a million dollars.

Now, he produced the film himself, he worked with the guy that's always in his Instagram and YouTube skits. They did it together and then they sold the film for $15 million to focus features. And it has now grossed almost $150 million worldwide, more than a hundred times its budget. And literally last year Curry was slogging away, making YouTube and Instagram sketches, uploading passion project, short films, sue's YouTube channel because nobody would work with him.

He couldn't get any distributors. And now he's here. And even though those are the two films that are out right now that everybody is talking about that are going viral, that's sparking all of this discourse. There also is another example that I feel like is relevant to pull into this conversation from earlier this year. This director, his name is Mark Fishback. He is another YouTuber. He's known for his gaming videos.

He directed self-finance and distributed the horror fel Iron long earlier this year, which brought in $50 million against his $3 million budget. And the reason why I keep emphasising these numbers is because the average budget for like a big studio movie that ends up in theatres that you see the billboards for is between like 65 to $150 million. And these young men are doing it on three million ten million and seven hundred $50,000 and they are crushing the competition.

And I mean, not only is this a new dawn for Gen Z in Hollywood, which we are going to get into, but it is also a new dawn for horror specifically because all three of these movies are in the horror genre. Like both Obsession and backroom are interesting for so many reasons. But like just focusing on their plots. Neither of these horror films are the traditional like Blood Gore, jump, scare, vampire, scary doll like type horror film.

They do feel very tailored to young people in how psychological they are. Like backroom has like weird creepy monsters in the back rooms part of the film. But the film and the rooms themselves actually based on my understanding of it, are a physical manifestation of our minds and intrusive thoughts and what it feels like to be trapped in. You know, your thoughts of anxiety and trauma. I mean, come on, like Gen Z was always going to be eating that up.

That feels like primed for a TikTok dissertation. Plus the back rooms themselves are based on something from four chan that was created back in 2019. Like it is literally internet lore. It is perfect for Gen Z. Same with obsession in terms of it not being a traditional horror, it's more about control and toxic relationships and selfishness than anything that's like scary, crazy horror film. So that in and of itself makes the films unique and interesting to people and shocker, it actually got people's butts to the movie theatre anyway.

And so obviously people in Hollywood, people in the media, the journos, the film critics, they're trying to figure out what worked, like how did these cheap movies from these YouTubers, these internet people, these newcomers, how are they getting millions of people to show up and buy tickets at the movie theatre? And personally, I feel like the answer is quite simple. The answer is literally in the statement that I just made.

It's young people. It is industry disruptors. They're making unique stories, really not that complex. Just like how buying a silencer from Silencer shop is also not that complex. Now if you guys are not shooting suppressed yet, then you are genuinely missing out. So we use suppressors on our firearms here in our personal Backyard range. And the difference in our shooting is night and day. Like it is easier to control, there is less snappy of a recoil.

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I mean, people have been saying like Hollywood is dead for literally like six years now. And I think people have been treating it like this little baby fragile thing that they are so afraid of wrecking. Like whether it is, you know, political correctness and making sure you're hiring the right people with the right skin tone and the right sexuality and telling the right story so that you don't piss off half the country or everyone in the entertainment industry walking on eggshells because of the fear of AI and wondering when that's gonna take over their work.

And then all of that mixed in with the chaos of Netflix and streaming and how that totally upended the entire distribution system. Plus then, yes, you had COVID, you had all of these strikes where half of the entertainment industry was not working. Like the whole thing, like the last decade has just been awful for film and tv. And so it's no wonder why you know me and you just audiences have been questioning like, will there ever be anything good again?

Like this is just chaos 24 7 and you guys seem like you are producing nothing. But it seems like what the industry needed to turn this around was just a cohort of young people with nothing to lose. These are not, you know, credentialed and seasoned filmmakers with a industry to protect and traditional standards to uphold. Because honestly, in thinking about Hollywood from the last 10 years, what was left for them there?

What was left for them to try to replicate or uphold Nothing, literally nothing. So they had to build it themselves. If they wanted to make cool things, they just had to do it. And what's so interesting about these three young men is that they had built in audiences. They also had experience creating content from scratch and figuring out what their audiences liked, what they enjoyed making. And in a couple of the cases, and this is really important just because of, you know, the economy and what studios are funding right now, but they had their own money to put into it.

They were able to self-fund these projects. Like really all they needed to do was just take a chance on themselves and hope that on the backend there would still be some, you know, risk taking creatives in Hollywood that would be willing to give them a shot for distribution to help them get these projects in front of more people. And clearly just based on the numbers, it's worked. Now the other thing that people are pointing to online, which is so perfect and hilarious, it's like the middle finger to woke honestly, is that all of these films were directed by straight white men.

Somebody commented and said, straight white males pay attention. Hollywood, hire us if you actually wanna make money. Which is so true, it literally is. Another person said, look what happens when you just give white men the camera, black, trans, disabled, genderqueer filmmakers are the hardest hit. I know that they're seething out there, but it is also not just this specific genre of horror films. Like think about the other big blockbusters from this year, like the Super Mario movie Project.

Hell Mary did really well. I love that movie. They were also created and directed by straight white men. And I'm not necessarily saying that those are the only reasons why these films are doing well. Obviously it is more, you know, nuanced than that. But I do appreciate the fact that it will make some angry leftist women see, and that always makes my heart happy. Now moving on to the bigger picture here, this really is a perfect storm for Hollywood this weekend because at the same time that these independent films from these 20 something year old YouTubers are doing unprecedented numbers.

Disney's latest butchering of the Star Wars franchise was also released in theatres and it has gone so terribly like so God awful, that IMAX literally pulled the film early so that another film could have an early release. And on that note, just talking about the profits, variety made a post and they said Star Wars, the Mandalorian and Roku earned just 6.5 million on its second Friday in North American cinemas. A 70% drop from its opening day, which is crazy.

Now to contrast that, I believe obsession after its first weekend, it saw a 30% increase going into the second weekend while initial protection saw the Lucas Hill Western grossing 40 million by Sunday, that number now looks closer to 25 million according to arrival estimates. That figure would push the film's domestic total to 136 million through two weekends. And again, remember the budget just for the production, just to film the actual movie was 160 again, not including promotion, anything else.

So they have not even scratched that production budget. And of course the low hanging fruit on X right now is to say like, we did this and the film is woke and conservatives boycotted it. We did this to Disney. But like in my opinion, that's really not why. And that's also just such a boring argument. It also lacks any nuance regarding the situation in Hollywood, or even with Star Wars and Lucas Film specifically. Like sure they have made crappy political moves in the past that have alienated fans and they have caused boycotts in the past.

But like that is not all one guy responded to this post for example and said, yeah, I've gotta stop you right there. The conservative boycott had nothing to do with this. The preexisting Star Wars audience was already jaded by years of pork quality shows and the Manda movie was already predicted to get this sort of box office even before Poso spoke up, which is absolutely correct. This has been a long time coming. This feels like the final nail in the coffin, but this is not new or caused by conservatives just now sticking it to Disney.

This has been a long, very slow, painful death for Star Wars and Disney and seemingly more relevant than you know conservatives and politics is the fact that fans, just normal fans taking politics out of it are simply burned out and that the movie allegedly lacked death and was hastily put together. Because as the story goes, this movie that is out in theatres right now, not for long, sorry, Disney, but this movie, the Mandalorian and Roku was originally slated to be season four of the Mandalorian TV show.

And then after a series of unfortunate events took place and it kept being pushed off, Disney just said, okay, let's just go ahead and make it a movie. And so over the last couple of years, it was kind of hurriedly and lazily transformed into a film without the story really being reworked is how it seems like one reviewer said, one of the biggest problems here is how obvious it is that this was originally designed as a television season.

You can practically identify where individual episode endings would've existed. Every major action sequence feels structured like a season finale. Payoff characters arrive at a location, face danger, escape, move to another planet, repeat. There is very little connective emotional tissue between these moments. It genuinely starts to resemble watching the cut scenes of a Star Wars video game rather than experiencing a theatrical film crafted with the cinematic rhythm, the pacing suffers so badly because of this.

Somehow the movie manages to feel both rushed and sluggish at the same time. Okay, so instead of driving the Star Wars universe forward in any kind of innovative or creative way, it was just relying on what I see as lazy nostalgia. A built-in fan base that unfortunately did not care. Neurotic posted on X and he said, let me get one thing straight. I am enjoying the Mandalorian and Goku bombing at the box office. It genuinely makes me happy.

Disney and Lucasfilm have earned every bit of this, their treatment of George's work. And worse the treatment of the fans is why they're failing. They never understood either hubris, activism, idiocy have turned it into a zombie franchise. It walks and talks, but it has no soul. What Disney did to Star Wars is a crime against imagination. Fire everyone at Lucas film or not. Welcome to the long dark apathy of the soul twats.

And if you look anywhere online, the majority of Star Wars fans are pissed. And just to add on to that, like these complaints are not new Star Wars fans have been saying this for years. Like somebody said, I think the style of storytelling across most TV shows is causing this. Every character is treated like an IP and not a meaningful character. This means that we can never have anything happen to them. The damages their potentials of future products, the type of storytelling has been present in comic books forever.

The heroes fight villains, but neither hero nor villain can ever be defeated completely because the story has to go on forever. It's the business side of it, which another fan jumped on and added to that and said, it is just an assembly line product. Now, star Wars has always had a business end of it. I'm not delusional, but instead of a small collection of artists with a passion for storytelling, making products as a result of both in and out universe ideas, now every Star Wars product is made in a boardroom.

George Lucas let the OT breathe for what, 15 years before coming back for the prequels. Now anything more than a few months is seen as money lost. Whether a creative spark is there or not, a show's going to be made, gotta keep toys on the shelf, gotta keep them paying for that Disney plus account. Gotta keep the IP trending on Twitter. I think the most important line in all of that is whether a creative spark is there or not, a show is going to be made.

I feel like that's what we've been seeing in Hollywood for a decade now, whether it is, you know, Disney or a TV show or movies, it's just like they're churning out crap and never stopped to think about what they were doing wrong and why audiences were not showing up. And so now let's look at what's happening in the world today. Like, you know, where every decision was not made in a stuffy boardroom. Well, the sets of obsession and backroom.

And so that is what the internet cannot stop talking about, is they're seeing all of this play out at the same time. Because for years now, Hollywood has been sounding the alarm about their own demise. They have been, you know, frantically yelling at audiences saying, you know, you don't understand our films. You're not politically correct enough. You hate us, you are backwards. Get your butts in seats. I mean, they have been doing everything and they really did take some wrong turns.

You know, they politicised things, they alienated audiences, they dumbed down so many projects. They made lazy craft just for the sake of producing something. And the Mandalorian and Roku really feels like the culmination of all of that. They have a fan base that is burned out. You know, half the country is politically jaded against the franchise and its owners. There's a production team that allegedly or presumably, you know, threw together the film after it was originally supposed to be a season of a TV show.

And then on the flip side, you have movies like Obsession and Back Rooms. They have totally thwarted the traditional Hollywood model in terms of how films came about and who was at the helm of them. And yet this is where it's so ironic and so amazing to me, even though they're doing things so differently, they are still getting the most traditional old school Hollywood response. Hundreds of millions of dollars in profits in a theatrical run.

That is what the big Hollywood studios would literally kill to have. I mean, it is all going so well that I think the film obsessions streaming date when it was supposed to leave theatres and go on to, I don't even know where it's gonna be, but I think it was pushed back 90 days so that it could have the full traditional OG theatrical run that never happens these days. And these films, you know, were not made entirely with ai.

They were not some weird series of tiktoks strung together to make a movie or whatever Boomer thing Hollywood is gonna try to, you know, captivate Gen Z audiences. They are just unique, new, fresh stories that are told by young creatives whose platforms and their existing fan bases gave them years of experience and trial and error before they started filmmaking. And again, most importantly, I'm guessing that these young men felt like they had nothing to lose because what was left of Hollywood for them to try to replicate or protect.

And this just gives me so much hope because I think that creatives and movie lovers have been panicked about, you know, what Gen Z and what social media and what AI would do to cinema and films and storytelling. And it turns out Gen Z might actually be the ones to save it. And not by turning it on its head and turning it into TikTok, but simply by making the kinds of movies that we actually want to pay for. Crazy thought.