The Screen Gems YouTuber Pivot Is Further Proof That Creators Are Hollywood’s Future | Analysis

If you need further proof that the creator economy is the future of Hollywood, look no further than Sony Pictures Entertainment’s complete shakeup of label Screen Gems. The horror-centric film production label, which is part of Sony, tapped former YouTube executive Fede Goldenberg to lead the division on Friday, with a specific focus on theatrical projects from the next generation of digital-native storytellers. Goldenberg will report to Sanford Panitch, the president of Sony Pictures’ Motion Picture Group. Ashley Brucks, who has been the president of Scream Gems since 2023, will transition to a producing role. Sony’s hiring of Goldenberg — an executive who has worked closely with creators for the past 15 years — shows just how seriously the company is taking the creator ecosystem. Goldenberg was hired due to his expertise with creators’ needs and sensitivities, an insider familiar with the hiring told TheWrap. Unlike other more traditional talent, creators often serve as directors, writers, producers, entrepreneurs and stars of their work, a tall stack of hats that often means they’re fiercely protective over IP rights and the experience of their audience. Goldenberg, who was part of the YouTube Originals era, was key in YouTube acquiring the Oscars, has guided creators from launch to gaining over 50 million subscribers, and managed relationships with earlier digital pioneers like Maker Studios and Fullscreen. In other words, he is intimately familiar with the unique needs of creators and the demands of Hollywood. And in a post-“Obsession” world where the Focus Features release from YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Curry Barker made over $500 million at the box office on a budget under $1 million, developing and curating the next generation of talent has never been more important for the major Hollywood studios. Sony sees this hiring as a way of adapting to the needs of younger moviegoers, as Gen Z audiences showed this year that they value the theatrical experience when they flocked to films like “Obsession,” “Backrooms” and “The Drama” (which, although not made by a creator, attracted big Gen Z interest). Younger audiences often trust creators and personalities more than advertising efforts, the insider said, pointing to how the media appearances with Tom Holland and Zendaya led to interest in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” or how fan affinity for Zach Cregger led to the box office success of “Resident Evil.” Creators are also skilled at eventizing content and mobilizing communities, two strengths Sony and Screen Gems hope to capitalize on as they invest more in creator talent. The Screen Gems shakeup is more than capitalizing on the latest trend. It’s an acknowledgement that what Gen Z wants is markedly different than the traditional Hollywood studio pipeline, and Sony’s poaching of Goldenberg to reshape Screen Gems into a creator-driven movie studio is the biggest sign yet that creators are the future of Hollywood entertainment, especially as the mammoth 2026 box office proved that Gen Z — a generation that grew up watching content on YouTube — wants to go to the theater for the right film. Or the right creator. Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Entertainment are specifically interested in developing theatrical movies from creators rather than streaming movies, even though Sony has a streaming deal with Netflix. The company is also open to both short-form and long-form creators, with the insider noting that they’re primarily interested in storytellers with good ideas. “Fede moving from YouTube to lead Screen Gems feels like validation of something I’ve believed since I started working with creators in 2014, and something the work I did at Disney and Paramount only reinforced: Creators were never just a new category of talent for brand deals. They’re the next generation of Hollywood,” RJ Larese, president of the creator agency Sixteenth, told TheWrap. “For years, the industry treated digital-native talent as something adjacent to Hollywood. This move is another sign that the lines are disappearing. When someone who deeply understands Creators is brought in to lead a studio, it reinforces that they’re becoming part of who shapes where Hollywood goes next.” Fede Goldenberg Why Screen Gems is pivoting Since its resurrection as a film studio in 1998, Screen Gems has always been home to lower-to-moderately budgeted horror films that are genre-heavy — it is most famously the studio behind the “Resident Evil” and “Underworld” films. But over the past few years, the studio has been leaning harder into IP to moderate results — 2025 saw the release of video game adaptation “Until Dawn” (it grossed $54 million against a $15 million budget) and reboot “I Know What You Did Last Summer” ($65 million gross against an $18 million budget), and this year the studio put out “Evil Dead Burn” ($72 million gross against a $20 million budget) and “Insidious: Out of the Further,” which at a $170 million gross on an $18 million budget is Screen Gems’ biggest hit since the last “Insidious” movie. It’s the kind of place that makes a movie where Russell Crowe plays a vespa-riding priest that ekes out $77 million at the box office and performs solidly on PVOD and streaming (that would be 2023’s aptly named “The Pope’s Exorcist”). A lot of Screen Gems movies are singles or doubles at the box office – good for a few scares, rarely memorable. But in a world where horror sensations are being made for even cheaper and racking up millions of views on YouTube, and films like “Obsession” or “Backrooms” or “Longlegs” or “Weapons” are garnering critical acclaim and even Oscars, this pivot feels like a smart move. This pivot is also not necessarily new for Hollywood. During the independent filmmaking boom of the 1990s, the major studios launched specialty labels to cater to this new, popular wave of filmmaking — Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight and Gramercy Pictures were all formed in this period. Ella Rubin in “Until Dawn” (Kerry Brown/Screen Gems) Horror labels, too, were launched when that genre hit a peak of popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s. That’s how Screen Gems was born. For Hollywood, Curry Barker’s $522 million hit “Obsession” and Kane Parsons’ $400 million hit “Backrooms” have been the go-to evidence that creators are the future of theatrical. But though Barker and Parsons are the two creators that Hollywood can’t seem to stop talking about, Mark Fischbach, aka Markiplier, is the filmmaker that other creators are following. Released in January, Fischbach’s “Iron Lung” made $50 million at the box office, an amount that may seem paltry compared to some of the other creator-led films mentioned. But that $50 million was made from a movie that Fischbach self-financed and self-released — a model that many creators are starting to seriously consider. Both Alanah Pearce and Sean McLoughlin, aka Jacksepticeye, praised Fischbach’s approach when announcing their theatrical movie “Godmother,” a film that McLoughlin personally financed principal photography for and that Helmstreet Productions funded post-production. “I suspect there will be a huge, overwhelming wave of content-creator-led features funded by Hollywood over the next couple of years,” Pearce previously told TheWrap. “I’m glad we’re set to come out ahead of that, not only because it’s easier to stand out, but also because I fear quality will drop.” The success of “Iron Lung” also inspired the upcoming Jeff the Killer movie, an upcoming horror project from creator Savanah Moss and Tongal, a network of independent talent and creator-led studios. Indeed, in the wake of “Obsession” and “Backrooms” exploding, several Hollywood studios have tapped YouTube creators or mined internet-famous IP for feature adaptations. Now, with Screen Gems, there will be an entire studio devoted to it. “This has been the biggest sea change in Hollywood since the original studio system broke up. It’s been pretty obvious that the studios have been out of touch with the fans and audiences for some time now,” James DeJulio, the co-founder and CEO of Tongal, previously told TheWrap. Though the Sony insider acknowledged that independent distribution and financing is an increasingly popular choice for creators, these releases don’t often include global release plans or robust marketing plans. Those sorts of gaps are the ones that Screen Gems Pictures under Goldenberg aims to fill.