Creator Camp, the self-dubbed “internet-born film studio” that wants to challenge traditional Hollywood by taking digital video creators to the big screen, is releasing its first film into theaters.
Two Sleepy People comes from writer/TikTok filmmaker Baron Ryan and writer/actress Caroline Grossman, who co-star as “a couple that’s married every night, but by morning–they’re strangers.” It was made in 100 days on a budget of $100,000, and is the first public-release project to come out of Creator Camp.
We’ve covered Creator Camp before as part of our ongoing eye on the complicated relationship between Hollywood and content creators, but for those unfamiliar, Creator Camp was founded in 2021 by creators Max Reisinger, Simon Kim, and Chris Duncan. The plan was to hold multi-day retreats for both aspiring and established content creators, with the ultimate goal of “[shaping] a better internet by fostering deeper connections and providing more space for meaningful stories online.”
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To do that, it started partnering with entities like Switzerland Tourism to bring creators on-site to beautiful locations, giving them inspiration and backdrop to make complete short films in a matter of days. (The 2024 partnership with Switzerland Tourism resulted in a social media campaign Creator Camp says generated 92M+ impressions, 1,500+ posts, and $9M+ in ad value.)
Then, earlier this year, Creator Camp decided to tackle something bigger. It partnered with Patreon, gave 10 digital content creators liquid cash to make their own high-production films, and held a film festival showing off the results at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas. It also tapped industry names like Quentin Tarantino to host workshops for attending creators.
The festival–where Two Sleepy People first screened–ended up welcoming over 1,000 attendees and generated $150,000 in ticket sales.
Not long after, the “tiny group of 20-year-olds” (their words, not ours) who make up the Creator Camp team decided to empty their bank accounts and rent a massive, permanent studio space where they can continue offering production resources to content creators.
“Everyone knows Hollywood is broken. But nobody’s doing anything about it,” Cristina Colina, Creator Camp’s Chief Creative Officer, said at the time. “While the internet now fully owns audience attention, traditional entertainment still hasn’t caught up.”
Now, the studio says it’s working with 300 “curated creators” who together have generated 3 billion views in the last year.
“Across the internet, a new generation of filmmakers is telling bold, cinematic stories,” Reisinger, Creator Camp’s CEO, said in a statement. “Two Sleepy People proves that cinema isn’t fading–it’s evolving. Storytellers who grew up online understand what this generation wants to see on the big screen. Gen Z is the loneliest generation, craving connection. We’re bringing people together in person around stories that are meaningful, communal, and created by voices they already trust.”
As we’ve previously seen with creators like Sam & Colby, Inoxtag, and Wendigoon, creators are becoming more and more adept at (and theaters are becoming more and more receptive to) putting their films out for screen runs. That’s what Creator Camp plans to do, too.
It’s holding a four-theater premiere run of Two Sleepy People, starting in Seattle at the Majestic Bay Theatres, then popping to San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, then to Los Angeles’s Wilshire Ebell Theatre, and finally wrapping up at El Museo de Barrio in New York City.
The Seattle and New York stops are already sold out, but tickets for the San Francisco and Los Angeles screenings (on Oct. 28 and 29, respectively) are still available for $25/person.
