Good afternoon, and welcome to the ninth issue of Creator Games.
I’m Salil, co-founder of Third Studios, I lead everything creator economy at THIRD, and I’ll be writing and editing this newsletter every week.
Creator Games exists to discover, fund and tell the stories of the next generation of creator entrepreneurs. This newsletter is where we share the ideas, companies and opportunities driving that mission across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
If you’ve got any stories to share or any feedback, feel free to email me at salil@third.group.
— Salil
Today’s lineup:
A fund just bet on a 20-year-old TikToker’s film slate
Hollywood’s $110B merger can’t beat YouTube
The YouTuber putting an AI film in theatres
A fund just bet on a 20-year-old TikToker’s film slate
Most creator deals start with a follower count. This one didn’t. A Nigerian fund just backed a 20-year-old TikToker’s films, and says his audience wasn’t the reason.
The Business Case →
On 5 October, Chude Jideonwo’s FourthMainland Fund announced an investment in Kenzy Ezike, per YNaija. Kenzy is 20. He has 5M+ followers on TikTok and almost 10M across platforms.
The money backs a slate of his films. The first one came out last week. Jideonwo says his team spent months on due diligence. They judged Kenzy on his IP, his creative plans and his management, not his audience size.
The fund itself started with a planned $500K of Jideonwo’s own money, per Empire Africa.
Put together, it reads like a seed round: a founder, a product roadmap, and an investor checking the business, not the reach.
Hollywood’s $110B merger can’t beat YouTube
This week, two of Hollywood’s biggest names became one company. On paper, it’s a $110B giant. On America’s TV screens, it’s still smaller than YouTube.
The Business Case →
On 6 October, Paramount completed its $110 takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, per Variety. The combined company is now called Skydance. It’s run by David Ellison and trades as SKYD. It has $70B in annual revenue and $80B in net debt.
Warner didn’t get weak overnight:
AT&T bought it in 2018.
In 2021, Project Popcorn put Warner’s whole film slate on HBO Max on the same day as theatres.
Then came the Discovery merger in 2022, and the debt kept growing.
California and 11 other states sued over the deal. Under the settlement, Skydance has to release 30 theatrical films a year for the first two years (20 of them wide releases).
Each film gets 45 days in theatres, and 90 days before it goes to subscription streaming. But films aren’t where the audience is. Tom Cruise’s Digger opened to about $8M on a $125M budget, per THR. Meanwhile, a single MrBeast video passed 70M views in a day, per Dexerto.
In Nielsen’s July report, YouTube had 14.2% of US TV viewing. Paramount (6.5%) and WBD (5.3%) together had 11.8%. For more background on how we got here, watch this explainer video.
The YouTuber putting an AI film in theatres
Markiplier showed a YouTuber can put his own film in theatres. Iron Lung made $50M worldwide. Now Gossip Goblin wants to see if an AI film can do the same.
The Business Case →
Gossip Goblin, the YouTuber Zack London, is releasing “Gods Don’t Give Gifts” in limited US theatres on 30 October, per IndieWire.
He’s self-releasing it, the same way Markiplier did with Iron Lung. It’s a sci-fi horror anthology of four stories, and the visuals are fully AI.
But 10 artists worked on it for two months, and the voices are real actors. London has about 1.4M followers each on YouTube and Instagram, and over a billion views.
The film is co-produced by Edward Saatchi’s Fable, which is also running a $15K contest for fans to make AI shorts set in the same world.
Ticket sales will be the first real test of whether people pay to watch an AI film in a cinema.
🗞 Creator Gossip
Flipkart works with 500K+ creators, and about 450K are expected to make content for Big Billion Days. It says small creators now beat macro influencers for shopping.
WME launched Creator Labs to build its clients’ YouTube channels, and it’s behind Joy Reid’s 500K-subscriber channel. Live Nation is funding Creator Nation, a company buying up creator-management firms. Hollywood’s agencies want in on the creator business.
MrBeast flew to Mumbai to promote Ranbir Kapoor and Sai Pallavi’s Ramayana, which opens on 8 November.
KFC UK put a QR code on every ad. It got 9.8M scans and 50K+ applicants, and KFC turned 30 superfans into “Don’t Crack,” a YouTube game show with a cash prize.
Subscribe | Advertise | Apply for funding | Watch | Follow