Creators like the McCarty family are poised to take over Hollywood. Viral Nation wants to help them get there.

Here at Tubefilter, we’ve kept a close eye on the relationship between the Hollywood empire and content creators. Before YouTube, all the video content we watched, from movies to TV shows to news programs, had to pass through a gate. And those gates were maintained by titans: legacy studios, TV network executives, investors…

But the advent of digital media democratized what we watch–and what we create. YouTubers pioneered a new breed of creativity. They didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to make content. There were no execs paging through their scripts or withholding distribution unless something was sanitized to be less controversial or more “market-oriented.”

With digital video, the membrane between idea and final product was so thin as to be nearly nonexistent, resulting in a golden age of webseries and (thanks to effective monetization and crowdfunding) a new culture of filmmaking creativity limited only by the fact that creators need to sleep sometimes.

Over the past two decades, the digital content industry has swelled from a niche hobby to a $250 billion titan all its own. YouTube is now the most-watched video destination in the United States, beating every single streaming service and linear/broadcast TV network–and the old guard is beginning to recognize its power.

Hollywood studios like A24 have poached YouTubers and TikTokers like RackaRacka and Kane Parsons to make their own movies, and Netflix–despite increasing competition with the platform–is essentially using YouTube as a zero-effort, zero-involvement talent incubator. It’s plucked established kids’ entertainers like Cocomelon and Ms. Rachel to lead children’s programming, and has brought in some of YouTube’s most-watched comedians/podcasters, like Joe Rogan and Tony Hinchcliffe, for standup specials.

There’s another option outside of getting picked up by giants: Creators like Sam & Colby and Inoxtag have self-produced feature-length films and brokered their own screening deals with movie theaters, to great success.

But what about established digital creators who have great ideas for new IPs and want support developing them?

That’s where Viral Nation comes in. We previously talked about how the talent management and social media marketing agency operates a neverending “flywheel” of services for creators and brand partners across talent, marketing, creative studio, and technology divisions.

Those services include helping some of the ~900 content creators on its roster “carve paths for their presence in more ‘traditional’ media formats,” it says.

“At Viral Nation, we are redefining what it means to develop entertainment for the traditional media landscape,” it tells Tubefilter. “And we’re doing it in deep partnership with the creators themselves.”

Viral Nation’s approach is to work “hand-in-hand with our roster of digital-native stars to build original IP–from unscripted to scripted to animated–that is rooted in their voice, their vision, and their audience.”

These efforts are led by Paul Telner, a longtime digital video veteran who started as a YouTuber himself back in 2005, with his content regularly featured on The View, MTV, and in GQ. He eventually leveraged his online success into his own TV show on national Canadian network MuchMusic.

He went on to become Director of Development at Studio71, where he helped launch Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson‘s YouTube channel and sold multiple creator-led series to traditional and digital platforms. From there he became Creative Director at BBTV, and finally joined Viral Nation in 2022 as its Head of Programming.

“When I started my career back in 2004, 2005, there was really one route,” he says. “You go to a television network and you pitch and you hope they say yes, but in most cases it’s very challenging and hard. And now the creators, really, in my mind, are starting to strategically steer the conversation and the narrative that there isn’t just one way forward.”

He says Viral Nation always hopes to get a creator in with a traditional titan, but it’s also not afraid to take a different path. “If you sell your show to a major U.S. broadcaster or network or streamer, that’s phenomenal. And that’s always a route we try. But,” he adds, “there are so many other ways to create original pieces of IP that we can start on their respective socials, which really are their own streaming networks.”

Some of Viral Nation’s creators, he says, “have numbers that are competitive and many times better than traditional television and streaming.”

Like the McCarty family: Mom Stephanie, dad Kevin, and kids Audriana (9) and Braxton (5), whose YouTube channel has nearly 16 million subscribers and brings ~500 million views per month. They started making content during COVID lockdowns, leaning into a silly-scary angle with a seemingly endless closet of costumes.

Telner describes the fam as “unbelievably talented,” and says they were among the first creators to catch his eye for potential IP development when he joined Viral Nation.

“They are brilliant,” he says. “The timing of the editing, the way they make their videos, the brand. Even though they were doing really well, I thought, ‘This is meant for greatness. This is meant for more.’ So I brought them to a very prolific traditional Hollywood producer named Catherine Winder.”

Winder has an impressive track record in blockbuster animation, including work on The Powerpuff Girls, the Ice Age franchise, Dexter’s Laboratory, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and The Angry Birds Movie. When Telner brought her Viral Nation’s roster, she “immediately identified the McCartys and said, ‘There is a world we need to build around this family. It’s The Addams Family, it’s spooky, it’s crazy,'” he explains. “And when I spoke to the McCartys, they were like, ‘We would love our own cartoon.'”

So, Viral Nation and the McCartys partnered with Winder’s production company Wind Sun Sky Entertainment, and together cooked up Camp McCarty, a series about an all-year-round summer camp that serves as a refuge for monsters who want a sweet vacation away from judgmental humans.

The show recasts Kevin as “Dad,” the camp’s “main host, receptionist, unclogger of all things sewage-related,” and a staunch defender of monsters. Stephanie, meanwhile, becomes “Mom,” the half-human, half-demon camp manager who’s always in charge…until her demon side gets a little too wild. Then there’s Audriana’s fictional self, Audri, as the camp’s activities manager and “often the only adult in the room,” according to her official bio. Last but not least is Braxton, who inherited his mom’s demonic nature and enjoys sowing chaos around camp.

The McCartys unveiled the show in September 2024, and since then have been doing occasional lore drops, using the family’s YouTube content and social channels to drive viewers to Camp McCarty‘s official website, teasing characters and potential storylines for the show. Viral Nation and Wind Sun Sky hope this method will build enthusiasm for the cartoon, and may lead to interest from networks or streamers, as well as major brands.

“We’re starting to build a narrative of what Camp McCarty is to these subscribers,” Telner says. “As we speak, we’re building out programming for it. We’re building the actual animation of the show, we’re talking to potential partners, and we’re talking about all the ways we can bring this incredible piece of IP to the audience and beyond.”

Telner leads Viral Nation’s creator IP development division with one core objective: “I want creators to finally get the respect they deserve.”

“We respect actors, we respect directors, we respect comedians, we respect entrepreneurs who start their own businesses. Creators are all entrepreneurs who have succeeded,” he says. “If you have an audience of millions, that is a very unbelievable, amazing thing to do. I’m lucky enough to be working alongside these creators to help tell their stories in new ways.”

As Viral Nation continues to build this part of its business with more creators, it could expand IP development into graphic novels, comic books, and live experiences. Another creator who’s on the docket is Max Cohen, aka TikToker Murray Hill Boy. Telner says Cohen’s “premium sketch content and laser-sharp writing skills are prime for big wins, and we are working toward that.”

“There’s so much we can do here,” he adds. “There’s board games and apps and books for kids, and we’re just scratching the surface of what can be. We’re at the start of a boom of original IP and Hollywood waking up and saying, ‘We should probably be taking this really seriously.'”