Minecraft Showed How Much the Movie Business Needs Creators
But these two very different worlds have a ways to go before unlocking their combined potential
This post is part of a special three-part series on the state of the video advertising sector, produced in partnership with National CineMedia
Until this past weekend, the movie business had been off to a rough start this year. 2025 was supposed to be a post-Covid, post-writer’s strike renaissance year, yet the box office was actually down 7 percent versus last year.
Meanwhile, the creator economy continues to boom, as the entertainment preferences among younger generations become clearer - they are creator and social platform-first.
Per Deloitte: “56% of Gen Zs report that social media content is more relevant to them than traditional content like TV shows and movies.”
The same goes for 43% of millennials
Which begs the question - is the movie business doing enough to engage with the Creatorverse - and vice versa? Don’t these two worlds need each other?
At least, this was the Big Sweeping Lead I was planning to start this post with - until Minecraft’s massive success blew the doors off the narrative.
The movie grossed a stunning $150.7 million in the US and $313.2 million globally, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Not only did Minecraft feature several creators (including DanTDM who has 29 million subscribers on YouTube), but the Minecraft/YouTube world had been talking about the movie for months, and the trailer had generated so many memes that some theaters reported chaos surrounding certain scenes.
Julia Moonves, SVP, Advertising Sales & Brand Partnerships at Pocketwatch, said that Warner Bros. tapped her company to help create promotional Minecraft videos with “OG Minecraft creator, Captain Sparklez.”
“Young audiences are cheering for Minecraft jokes and memes within the film,” she said. “And we know who got them there.”
So maybe Hollywood’s got this creator thing all figured out. Well…
Am I saying that Minecraft’s success was the result of a few creator engagements? Um, no. The movie is based on a 15-year old massive video game franchise that has now touched multiple generations of kids, and they turned out in droves.
That said, it’s worth asking what Hollywood might learn from this. Because right now, the industry’s track record on working with creators is actually pretty mixed.
“It’s a studio by studio thing,” said Jamie Gutfreund, founder of Creator Vision. “Some are very focused, and others are still doing the same old.”
Gutfreund cited Paramount, which has built out a stable of creators to help promote new movies. But given the immediate, short-term nature of the movie industry (your product either hits right away, or is in trouble fast), there is a cautious nature to this sort of thing.
“The main thing is that studios only focus on the opening weekend,” said Gutfreund. “They want a sure thing. Better for them to buy media on YouTube, show their trailers and know they are reaching massive audiences.”
Well, yes and no. As the Deloitte study recently pointed out, ads within social media posts resonate more with Gen Z than ads on streaming services - and YouTube sort of falls in the middle. So is running a trailer all over YouTube enough?
“There is a lot of experimentation,” said Dennis Ortiz, principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP. “But the creator world requires a deep level of understanding and expertise. Entertainment companies don’t have that social media companies have, the real-time data and analytics.”
Ortiz noted that marketing today often requires brands to churn out “lots of short form content and continuous creation. That’s not how movies work. They get a lot of data - after the fact.”
Plus, there’s the We’re Hollywood factor. It’s never been easy for brands to take the leap to put a lot of creative control in a YouTuber’s hands. It’s that much harder for movies companies - who see themselves as experts on taste and storytelling.
“With the growth of creator economy, brands are leaning in to maybe less highly-produced content,” said Amy Tunick, Chief Marketing Officer at National CineMedia (NCM). “The last maybe five years we’ve seen totally exponential growth in terms of openness on the marketing side. Hollywood has been slower to adapt to it. They are the keepers of the highly-produced.”
However, Joe Epstein, longtime marketing exec who’s logged stints at Warner Discovery and TikTok, cautioned against drawing too much of a sweeping conclusion. He noted that launching event movies in 2025 has become a business of marketing to specific coalitions of audiences to build a larger audience, and that the social media efforts directed toward each might not always be evident to all people because, by their nature, they are targeted to specific communities.
Epstein cited Top Gun Maverick, a massive hit from 2022. “They reached out to Boomers with Patriotism and the military aspect, and Gen X with nostalgia for Kenny Loggins and Val Kilmer.”
Meanwhile, the studio created a ready-made meme featuring actor Jon Hamm
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“They made it accessible to Gen Z,” he said. “It was a very clear example of audience-segmentation stacking. The movie business is not monolithic. Creators speak to niche communities, and these ads are designed to be integrated.”
Ok, so given their increased profile, when do we see more creators make the leap to the big screen? That’s a big if. After all, the struggles of bringing top creators to traditional TV have been well-chronicled.
As for the prospects of bringing YouTubers to movie screens, well - last summer’s Ryans World movie grossed less than $420,000 during its opening weekend last year. That’s - not encouraging.
Ortiz said that many digital creators most likely won’t translate to the the two-hour movie format screen - think video game live streamers or makeup influencers. But comedians or sports talent might be more adaptable. “The talent has to be right.”
Still, Ortiz cited Mr. Beast’s “Beast Games” on Amazon as perhaps a cautionary tale, “They brought him ‘off platform,’” he said. ‘The transition was ok, but wasn’t great His audience was actually on YouTube.”
Still, as Epstein noted, more and more viewers are watching YouTube content on TV, which would seem to make the leap to movie screens easier.
The Minecraft success should help.
“[Creators] the next generation of storytellers and we’re going to see them play an increasingly pivotal role in the future of entertainment, not just as amplifiers, but as architects of storytelling across every medium,” said Chris Brady, President, Global Chief Commercial Officer, Tribeca Enterprises. “Studios are recognizing that creators play a pivotal role in shaping the cultural conversation.”
NCM is moving in that direction. The company recently worked with several brands, including a big box retailer, to take creator-produced social video ads to movie screens across the country.
“Any brand that is doing social content, we can amplify it on screens,” said Tunick. “For Gen Z we know they are at the movies, and we have cracked the code of making vertical content look good on the big screen.”
This summer, the company is planning to roll out a new series (that would run prior to trailers) featuring two top creators - Jordan the Stallion and Naz Perez - breaking down big movies, such as the much-anticipated Superman reboot.
“We have a totally captive audience, and an understanding of the power of engaging Gen Z this way. So it’s a natural transition.”
Thus far, Warner Discovery has focused on pushing out teasers and long snippets of its big DC project. Would they actually put Superman in the hand of a few YouTubers?
“As someone who works with creators and studios to market films, I always think there is more they could be doing in terms of their creator partnerships,” said Pocketwatch’s Moonves. “But we are seeing success with studio partners in being able to drive interest amongst specific fan bases.”
Good insight 😌 Can i translate part of this article into Spanish with links to you and a description of your newsletter?