2025 - Hollywood didn’t collapse by accident. It optimized itself into irrelevance — and filmmakers paid the price. But 2026...?
( How The The Industry Accidentally Put Creators Back in the Driver’s Seat Just in time For The 2026 Creator Takeover )
Let’s dispense with the polite fiction.
2025 wasn’t a “challenging year” for Hollywood.
It wasn’t a “reset.”
It wasn’t a “transition.”
It was a controlled demolition — and the people under the rubble weren’t the executives who signed off on it.
It was filmmakers.
Writers rooms evaporated.
Finished films were erased like embarrassing texts.
Careers stalled while execs rebranded layoffs as “focus.”
And every creative was told, once again, to be patient… while the same decision-makers kept their bonuses and learned nothing.
If you worked in film or TV this year, you didn’t need a trade headline to tell you something was wrong. You felt it in the constant low-grade panic:
Fees down
Rights gone
Upside imaginary
Notes multiplying
Greenlights shrinking
Expectations somehow increasing
They even used a project paralyzing “Notes” processes as a control mechanism used to make creators more “compliant”.
When you end up with notes like this “People watch TV while on their phones. Could you write more exposition throughout the script, so they know what’s going on while they’re on their phones.”?
Whatever, Trevor!
And then the industry had the nerve to act surprised when audiences stopped showing up.
The Star System Finally Face-Planted
And It Was Sort Of Glorious (and Terrifying). I love actors, but the Star System held worthy projects in limbo unless we had one person on an ever changing list of names attached to the project. Sorry, Mr. “The Rock”!
2025 was the year the star system got pants’d in public.
Big names didn’t equal turnout.
Expensive prestige didn’t equal relevance.
“Based on IP” didn’t equal interest.
The audience shrugged and simply scrolled on.
Hollywood spent a decade inflating the cost of talent while hollowing out the meaning of the work — and when the numbers stopped working, they blamed everything except the system they engineered.
AI.
TikTok.
Young audiences.
Short attention spans.
Anything but themselves.
But here’s the truth they won’t put in a shareholder letter:
Hollywood didn’t lose culture. It gave it away.
Movies Didn’t Stop Mattering — Hollywood Stopped Treating Them Like They Did
Movies used to be how we learned who we were.
They taught us how to dress.
How to fall in love.
How to rebel.
How to imagine a different life.
They were the owner’s manual.
Then Wall Street got involved.
Then Big Tech got involved.
Then everything became “inventory.”
Not stories.
Not events.
Units.
When your business model is volume, the first thing you kill is patience.
The second thing you kill is risk.
The third thing you kill is the people who make weird, human, unforgettable things.
That wasn’t an accident.
That was optimization.
The 2026 Filmmaker NonDē Takeover Plan Is Already Underway
Here’s the part that should make executives nervous:
Creators didn’t wait for permission.
While studios were merging themselves into knots, filmmakers learned how to:
Build audiences sideways
Test ideas in public
Monetize without a greenlight
Prove demand before asking for money
Own distribution instead of renting it
YouTube stopped being a joke and became a farm system.
FAST and AVOD stopped being “dumping grounds” and became leverage.
**(In fact, by 2026, they will collectively surpass Netflix in subs).
Direct-to-audience stopped being desperate and started being strategic.
The power didn’t shift because creators demanded it.
It shifted because the economics stopped working for anyone else.
However, There’s An Uncomfortable Reality for Filmmakers Going Into 2026
Here’s the part I’m not going to sugarcoat:
Talent is no longer enough.
Everyone is talented.
Everyone has taste.
Everyone has a script they swear would have been made in 2009.
What separates filmmakers now isn’t creativity.
It’s whether you understand what you’re actually selling.
Not the story.
The risk profile.
Not the theme.
The audience gravity.
Not your voice.
The path to money.
See, executives buy certainty and they don’t understand art.
And the only way creators keep power in 2026 is by learning how to speak that language without letting it hollow them out. But knowing and understanding the buyers mind isn’t selling out. It’s leverage.
That means knowing:
Where your audience lives
How your project travels
What rights matter and which don’t
How money flows after the premiere
Why your project survives when the market tightens
Again, this isn’t selling out.
It’s refusing to be erased.
The Irony That Should Make You Smile Through the Rage
Hollywood now needs creators who understand business almost as much as craft.
Because they broke the old system.
They can’t absorb risk anymore.
They don’t know where culture comes from.
And they’re fishing instead of leading.
Which means — for the first time in a long time — filmmakers who know how to position themselves aren’t begging.
They’re negotiating.
Not loudly.
Not publicly.
But effectively.
This Is the Chip-On-Your-Shoulder Era, Dan It!
2025 killed the fantasy.
The fantasy that great work gets discovered.
The fantasy that loyalty is rewarded.
The fantasy that executives know what they’re doing.
What’s left is something better, if you’re willing to step into it:
Agency.
Hollywood didn’t generously hand creators power.
It leaked it.
And 2026 will belong to the filmmakers who start acting like owners in a broken system that needs them more than it admits.
…or the other option? F#&k ‘em and let’s go it alone! The choice is ours… for now.
Yup! Literally said this in October: this. was. on. purpose. Planned obsolesce. It was by design. But it's a good thing for indie film! Just not how they intended!!! =)
https://klamediagroup.substack.com/p/lets-talk-about-the-enshitification