Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston in 'Obsession.' Courtesy of Focus Features Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, two Gen Z creatives-led horror stories, have proven the concept that viral online video creators can conquer the box office. And Pedro Pina, vp, YouTube, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), thinks that they will be followed by more successful moves from the online into the cinema world.
He shared that forecast on the opening day of the sixth edition of Iberseries & Platino Industria in Spain’s capital, Madrid, on Tuesday in a keynote appearance entitled “YouTube: The Strategic Ally of the Audiovisual System.”
“We can see that creators are defining and shaping the culture. As a result, the cultural impact that we have is phenomenal,” Pina touted. “And you also see, from a cinema standpoint, a huge impact. [The creators of] Obsession and Backrooms, as you know, were YouTubers who decided to go into the box office [business] … – and they were a tremendous success this year. And I would expect to see more and more of these examples [at] the Emmys and Oscars” in the coming years.
Pina on Tuesday also explained YouTube’s recent focus on positioning itself as a partner to media and entertainment content companies. “The objective of being here at this event, as well as so many others … is to really show up and really explain how our model works,” he highlighted. “The majority of people in the industry, unfortunately, don’t understand it as much, and that’s 100 percent our fault. We never spent enough time explaining to the industry how we work, how you can monetize.”
The result? “To a point, a lot of people were afraid of YouTube. They had fear of YouTube mostly because they did not understand how the platform works, how their content could be protected, how it could reach new audiences, and why it works to monetize,” Pina continued. “Once you start breaking down that information and providing examples and showing the way, you see more and more people starting to look at this. So we started this journey roughly three years ago.” And YouTube has seen the benefit of making its narrative heard. “The amount of content uploaded by traditional players is increasing now,” Pina concluded.
Earlier in the Iberseries day, Amazon MGM Studios executives discussed the success of the Mercedes Ron young adult novel adaptations and Spanish zombie horror film Apocalypse Z, while Parrot Analytics shared data trends and estimates for the subscriber impact of Netflix’s Argentina hit series The Eternaut. The industry gathering runs through Friday.
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