Skybound’s David Alpert and Bell Media, Regal and UCLA leaders on creator ownership in Hollywood as distribution grows. Read the takeaways.
The session, “The state of the entertainment industry: The new economic, political, and market realities,” ran at FT Entertainment Live in the Sunset Ballroom. Financial Times Global Media Editor Daniel Thomas moderated four people who see the business from different seats: Sean Cohan, President of Bell Media; Eduardo Acuna, CEO of Regal Global Entertainment; Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television; and David Alpert, CEO and co-founder of Skybound Entertainment.
Between them they cover a broadcaster, a theater chain, a film school and an independent IP studio. Nobody on stage was selling the same thing, which made the overlap in their answers more interesting.
A hit TV show used to make a creator rich enough to buy a sports franchise. David Alpert, CEO and co-founder of Skybound Entertainment, told a Financial Times entertainment panel that this is no longer realistic. Top creators still land large overall deals, he said, but owning a piece of the show doesn’t work the way it did, and consolidation keeps trimming the ways to earn from one. Every other speaker described a different symptom of the same shift. There are more places to put content than ever and fewer companies that own it. That is the tension underneath creator ownership in Hollywood right now. Distribution is cheap. Ownership is not.
From a window of scarcity to a flood
Alpert’s diagnosis was blunt. The industry has “moved from this window of scarcity to too much,” he said. A prime-time slot or a good theatrical date once guaranteed a large audience. Now a new comedy competes with “Seinfeld and Parks and Rec,” plus comedic podcasts, video games and social feeds. He added Fortnite and music to the list. Barriers to distribution are lower than ever, he said, which is the kind of good news that arrives with an invoice.
The pitch is now an audience, not an idea
Alpert described how Skybound approaches a platform. It doesn’t lead with a great idea and attached talent. He tells buyers, “I’m delivering to you X million number of people who love this project.” Some share of those people, he said, are not on that platform yet.
He offered Invincible as the proof. By his account it is the most profitable and longest-running show on Prime Video, and it brings in subscribers who leave when it goes off air. For Skybound Entertainment’s Alpert, that is leverage for the creator and churn for the partner, and both sides know it. Consolidation can combine catalogs. It cannot merge a fan base that lives somewhere else.
He also described the engagement metric he trusts. On The Walking Dead, “I got boxes of death threats, but that was a positive metric.” A creator who can read that signal can tell a platform to stay in the lane that built the audience, even when the audience is furious.
Theaters sell the room
Eduardo Acuna, CEO of Regal Global Entertainment, made the case for the physical venue. “It’s not a place to watch a movie only. It’s a place to gather.” He said video consumption has plateaued and dipped slightly, and that theaters remain the cheapest out-of-home entertainment, which suits younger customers on dates. He called this the biggest summer in cinema history, and he also said Regal has screened the season finale of Stranger Things.
That last detail matters more than the box-office claim. An exhibitor showing a streaming finale is an exhibitor becoming an events business. The pivot is sensible, and it is also a product description being rewritten in public.
A Canadian read on the same map
Sean Cohan, President of Bell Media, said the company reaches 97 percent of the Canadian audience every month and that its streaming service has been profitable for four years. He didn’t call Hollywood weak. He said it still controls and finances a large share of the world’s IP. In his view, consolidation opens room for independent, risk-tolerant players who move faster and spend more carefully.
His operating philosophy was repetition. Take calculated risks, expect a run of failures, and use every window. A partner once told him that if you aren’t failing, you aren’t taking enough risk.
Ownership is the part nobody has solved
Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, said the school produces about 175 films a year, including vertical shorts. Her students see an “infinity of possibility” in making content, she said, while ownership stays limited. UCLA is working with its Anderson School of Business on new distribution, economic and production models, including whether creators can collectively own a work. She also said students assume they won’t be hired and are building elsewhere, and that industry has essentially abandoned higher education while benefiting from it.
Mini FAQ
Why can’t a hit TV show make a creator as rich as it used to?
Alpert told the panel that a hit once produced wealth on the scale of a sports franchise and that this is no longer realistic. He said top creators still receive large overall deals, but owning a piece of the show doesn’t work the way it did, and consolidation reduces the ways to earn revenue.
Is Hollywood suffering from franchise fatigue?
One panelist said he sees no superhero or IP fatigue, only bad movie fatigue. In that view, weak films fail and strong ones succeed whether or not they are built on existing IP.
What does bringing your own audience mean when pitching a platform?
Alpert said the pitch centers on the number of fans a producer can deliver, including fans who aren’t yet on the platform. The audience, not the idea, becomes the negotiating asset.
What to watch
The panelists agreed on the mechanics and split on the remedy. Alpert wants creators to arrive with audiences. Acuna wants screens to sell company. Cohan wants faster, cheaper bets. Shimizu wants ownership models rethought from the classroom up. The test over the next year is simple: do creators convert audience into equity terms, or only into bigger fees?
