YouTube is taking over Hollywood

June 11, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

YouTube is taking over Hollywood

In the summer of 2026, two movies made by people who built their audiences on YouTube—Backrooms and Obsession—became genuine box office hits. Meanwhile, The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act, a film that is essentially a YouTube video playing in theaters, landed as the number five movie in the country, ahead of The Mandalorian & Grogu. These aren't isolated flukes. They are the latest and most visible examples of a long-building trend: creators who came up through YouTube are now making successful theatrical films, and Hollywood is scrambling to figure out what that means.

The real story is not a YouTuber takeover

Puck media correspondent Julia Alexander, a former Verge colleague, is careful to separate the hype from the substance. The narrative that gets attention is that the next MCU will be a "YouTuber cinematic universe," with Mr. Beast winning Oscars in five years. That is almost certainly wrong. The more accurate story is simpler and less dramatic: a group of talented people, instead of going through the traditional gatekept Hollywood system, used the internet as a distribution platform, built audiences, and then converted a percentage of those audiences into theatergoers.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:02) **Show Introduction & Thesis Setup** - David Pierce introduces the topic: YouTube is taking over Hollywood. He cites recent box-office hits *Backrooms*, *Obsession*, and *The Amazing Digital Circus* (the #5 movie in theaters) as evidence of creators moving from YouTube to theatrical success.
2 (01:20) **Guest Introduction: Julia Alexander** - David brings on Julia Alexander, media correspondent at Puck and former Verge colleague, to discuss the trend in depth.
3 (04:20) **The Core Thesis: Not a "YouTuber Takeover" but a New Talent Pipeline** - Julia argues the real story isn't a YouTuber cinematic universe, but that creators bypassed traditional gatekeepers by building audiences on YouTube, then converting a percentage of that audience into theater-goers.
4 (07:40) **The Mechanism: Reducing Risk for Studios** - David and Julia discuss how this pipeline changes the risk calculus for studios like A24. A creator with a proven, engaged audience is a less risky bet than an unproven newcomer.
5 (09:51) **Historical Context: Is This New?** - Julia contextualizes the current moment as a confluence of a long-standing trend (creatives finding alternative routes around gatekeeping, like the 90s indie film scene) happening all at once.
6 (12:51) **The Collision of Two Worlds: YouTube vs. Hollywood** - David and Julia explore how the two systems are merging. The traditional model (high budget, high risk, high reward) is colliding with the creator model (built-in audience, lower risk, diversified income).
7 (17:01) **The End of the Traditional Movie Star?** - The discussion shifts to how this model changes celebrity. The next generation of stars will likely be "everywhere all the time," unlike the mystique of a Leonardo DiCaprio.

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Show Notes

Movies directed by YouTubers are suddenly blowing up at the box office. Backrooms and Obsession are both smash hits, and The Amazing Digital Circus had a big debut last week. Is this the moment YouTube truly takes over Hollywood? Julia Alexander, media correspondent at Puck, walks us through the much longer history of YouTube on the big screen, and helps us figure out where this all goes next. Is the future just really, really big YouTube videos?