How Hollywood Learned to Love Influencers

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. 

Hollywood Leans In

All of this has put Hollywood on notice, and the traditional entertainment industry is showing more eagerness to embrace the creator economy. “We’ve seen a big shift since the writers strike,” says Aliza Licht, founder of Leave Your Mark, a digital strategy consultancy and a founding member of the American Influencer Council. She says that not only is traditional talent embracing digital platforms, but writers, actors and producers who previously worked in traditional entertainment are now working on social-first content. Creators are hiring scriptwriters, production managers and out-of-work actors as Hollywood pivots. “Now, everyone needs to fit into a creator world,” Licht says. 

In January, Netflix signed Rachel Accurso, a popular YouTube educational creator known as Ms. Rachel, to bring four episodes of her show onto the platform. During the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that the streaming platform was actively hunting for internet talent. “We want to be in business with the best creatives on the planet. Regardless of where they come from,” he said. He added that Netflix also was taking a look at “a wide variety of” video podcasters “that might be a good fit for us.”

In June, Tubi rolled out “Tubi for Creators,” a program aimed at bringing episodic content from influencers onto the streaming platform. The initiative launched with six inaugural creators including Jubilee, Rhett and Link, Watcher and more than 500 episodes of creator-made content distributed across Tubi’s platform. “We’re listening to our viewers and recognize their desire for more stories that reflect culture and talent from the digital world,” says Anjali Sud, CEO of Tubi.

Avi Gandhi, founder of Creator Logic, a publication about the business of creators, says it “boggles [his] mind” why more of the legacy studios haven’t sought to lean more into the influencer space: “The richest trove of IP in human history is right in front of us, and they’re not mining it.” Gandhi adds that these Hollywood execs are going to have to figure things out quickly because there “is a rising tide of companies, like Chronicle Studios, Further Adventures and Super Ordinary, that want to be the new studios.”

What’s New is Old

The new class of professionalized, Hollywood-ready creator talent isn’t what you might think of when you hear the word “influencer.” Over the past year, the creator economy has branched out, with more and more older adults building media ventures. “The fastest-growing kind of group in the creative economy are grown-ups, adult professionals who have gotten laid off or who are tired of working for a company and are becoming creators as a way to grow their own businesses,” says Gandhi. 

These later-stage professional creators have been a boon for advertisers that are seeking to reach previously untapped communities online. More brands are seeking to work with creators on newsletter platforms like Substack or Beehiiv. “[These creators] can make money with small audiences because they cater to niches that have money,” Gandhi says. 

Big brands also are allocating more money to influencers. Earlier this year, Unilever’s incoming CEO announced that the company would spend 50 percent of its media budget with creators, while multiplying the number of creators that the company works with by 20. 

The Great AI Divide

The rise of AI, however, might throw a wrench into the whole system. Just this month, OpenAI released its first social app, a video generation platform called Sora 2 that allows anyone to create shortform AI-generated content. YouTuber Jake Paul was the first creator to mass open-source his likeness, allowing anyone on the app to “cameo” him into their content, generating thousands of views without him ever having to create a single piece of content. 

“Ultimately, AI helps the creator economy because it makes it so much easier to create content,” says Eric Wei, co-founder of Karat, a banking and finance company for creators. “I think we’re going to see either the existing leaders adapt to AI or a new generation for whom AI is part of their workflow.” Fully AI-generated creators already are garnering popularity. Evan Britton, CEO of Famous Birthdays, which is like a Wikipedia for influencers, says it launched AI creators in its database this year. “We’re seeing them rise,” he says. “[AI creators] are clearly going to be part of the ecosystem.”

But while AI creators generate some version of fandom, Billy Parks, a venture partner at Slow Ventures, says that ultimately it’s the human-to-human relationship creators generate that makes them so compelling. “I believe that the creator’s deep relationship with their audience — especially those that are adding value to their audience that are experts — is going to rise above AI slop,” he says. 

Political Land Mines

One uniquely human issue creators are increasingly having to navigate is the political landscape. With the Trump administration exerting more pressure on the platforms, Elon Musk funneling millions of dollars to political creators on X, and TikTok shifting ownership, creators now have to navigate choppy political waters if they want to remain on good terms with the platforms and ensure that they don’t become targets of government crackdowns on speech. 

Creators also report that the hyper-partisan political climate and escalating tensions over certain issues have made it harder than ever to cultivate a broad-based fandom. “If you don’t post, you’re a horrible person; if you do post, you’re a horrible person,” says Gigi Robinson, a Gen Z content creator. “Things are so hostile, it’s hard to do anything. There are people out there making spreadsheets of [what people are doing and saying online].”

Both political parties have sought to leverage content creators more over the past year. Trump has invited influencers into the White House briefing room and worked with them to push key policy issues. Leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker has amassed a powerful audience of millions by challenging the administration and educating young people on progressive politics. Mainstream Democratic organizations, meanwhile, have struggled to catch up. 

Live From Everywhere!

While much of the content creator industry was dominated by shortform a few years ago, livestreaming is taking over. Viewers watched more than 20 billion hours of live content in 2024 on Twitch (the equivalent of 2 million years) which paid out more than $1 billion to its creators. 

“Right now, the biggest stars in the world are all streamers,” says Zack Honarvar, founder of Good Story Studios, an entertainment studio that works with creators. Adds Twitch CEO Dan Clancy: “Social media is increasingly not social, shortform, impersonal, endless scrolling. We see Twitch and live content as the antidote to that.”

Young creators like Darren Jason Watkins Jr., aka iShowSpeed, 20, and Kai Cenat, 23, have had a breakout year by developing longform programmatic content and narrative streams. IShowSpeed, for example, embarked on a world tour, giving viewers an unfiltered look into countries like China from the perspective of a Gen Z creator. Cenat, meanwhile, took over an entire university campus where he hosted Streamer University, an online reality show to find the next big influencer. 

This story appeared in the Oct. 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.