Each week, we handpick a selection of stories to give you a snapshot of trends, updates, business moves, and more from around the creator industry.
This week, Hollywood can’t get enough horror projects led by creators, Twitch’s CEO highlights his platform’s sense of community, and the AI 4th of July arrives.
Creator commotion
The Mandela Catalogue is the next piece of YouTube IP to make the leap to the big screen. After a negotiation that Deadline described as a “highly competitive 11-studio bidding war,” Amazon and Steven Spielberg have won the rights for Tyler Clifton‘s spooky YouTube hit set in a fictional Wisconsin county. After getting more than 100 million YouTube views, Clifton is ready to make his next big lore drop in a movie theater near you.
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ExtraEmily gets “w growth” by cutting back on car streams. Even if Twitch won’t ban streaming and driving, ExtraEmily will take accountability. “I want to learn from my mistake and do better in the future, so from now on I’m going to try to minimize the amount of driving I do on stream,” she said after returning from a suspension. When she does stream in her car, she’ll turn the chat off.
VidCon dispatches
Dan Clancy’s appeal to community felt like a dig at TikTok. At VidCon, the Twitch CEO celebrated his platform’s communal spirit and reminded attendees that algorithms can’t provide a feeling of togetherness. “Sitting and swiping actually leaves you a little more isolated,” Clancy said. “It doesn’t make you feel connected, and that’s why live is coming on strong now.”
YouTube echoed MrBeast in a VidCon address. The last time I attended VidCon, in 2022, MrBeast used an appearance alongside YouTube exec Todd Beaupré to encourage creators to focus on audience engagement rather than algorithms. Flash forward to 2026, and Beaupré is parroting MrBeast’s claim as part of a YouTube panel. “When you have a question about the algorithm, I encourage you to replace the word ‘algorithm’ in your question with ‘audience,'” said YouTube’s Senior Director of Growth and Discovery.
Games and sports
The NBA Creator Cup is coming to the Summer League. The NBA’s off-season developmental league is getting a creator injection thanks to an event that will feature ballers like Bree Green, Cam Wilder, Kris London, and Jenna Bandy. If these creators show out during the game, they should get an invite to a Summer League roster.
Electronic Arts wants to get sports brands into the game. The publisher behind titles like EA Sports FC and College Football has a plan to connect with brands that traditionally buy against live sports. If they get an ad in a virtual stadium or even an entire branded college football team, those brands will come — or at least that’s what EA Sports is hoping will happen.
Have you seen YouTube’s soccer ball icon? To celebrate the 2026 FIFA World Cup, YouTube took the circular icon on its video progress bar and replaced it with a soccer ball. I don’t know what their goooool is here, but it’s a cute little cosmetic change, I guess.
Movers and shakers
Advertising Week New York taps Dhar Mann as its Chief Creator Officer. In his videos, Mann teaches moral lesssons to kids while inspiring tens of millions of subscribers in the process. At Ad Week NY, he’ll bring that sense of inspiration to marketers by delivering an opening keynote and curating panel topics.
Amazon adds a new face on its Creator Services team. After reorganizing its subsidiary Wonderly, Amazon needed an exec who could lead creator business development across its slate of celebrity-driven podcasts. Matt Schwimmer, a veteran of the sports podcast industry, will fill that role, working with stars like the Kelce brothers and LeBron James.
Substack turns its attention to brands by hiring a sponsorships lead. Right now, the newsletter business is both an arms race and a gold rush. It’s an ecosystem in which fluid brand-creator relations are crucial, so to stand out from the pack, Substack has brought in Roku vet Dan Robbins as its first Head of Brand Sponsorships.
The biz
Bose is trying to be a media company now. The newly-minted entity known as Bose Studios will span fields as diverse as podcasting, film, and pop music. The idea of a headphone maker becoming a content producer may sound odd, but if social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok can break into the pop music sphere, there’s probably room for Bose, too.
Instagram eyes CTV traffic on Samsung devices. The app known as Instagram for TV was already available on Amazon Fire and Google TV devices. Now, by adding Samsung Smart TVs to the mix, Meta is gunning for more Reels traffic on TV screens. Some long-form Insta content may be in the mix, too.
Shopee brings Instagram affiliate partnerships across the globe. Creators in Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Brazil can now link affiliate accounts to their Instagram profiles. Shopee says that it has already had success partnering with Meta for a Facebook integration, and Instagram is the next frontier in the company’s monetization push.
The internet is a strange place
A weird 4th of July deserves Darren Aronofsky’s weird AI tribute to America. The Aronofsky project titled On This Day…1776 has been available on YouTube for a while, but with the 250th birthday of the U.S. rolling around, now’s the time to rediscover — or hate-watch — the auteur director’s bizarre paean to his homeland. I can only imagine what our founding fathers would have thought if they had seen this.
Mountain Dew’s TikTok marketing stunt has it selling old-school cans for five cents a pop. The limited-edition cans are almost free, but the caffeine high could stick with you for days.
