Emmy-winning creator Bernie Su on why YouTube filmmakers succeed in Hollywood — and what AI will do to the movie industry next

Sam Sulk. Uh, no, I just took your image and put Chad GBD, but it actually makes a lot of sense in the bodybuilding. Uh, you know, you do need to take rest days in bodybuilding. So, uh, it's totally reasonable that that would be something that he would say. Uh but I that of course is fake news. That's our fake news segment for the day. Uh fortunately we have uh someone with some very real news joining us. We have Bernie Sue, the Emmy winning series creator uh to talk about movies. Go back to the youtubification of Hollywood. We'll get his takes on my takes my very novice takes. But why don't we start with an introduction on you and yourself. Can you tell us a little bit about you?

Yeah, sure. Hi, my name is Bernie. Um, I am been working in the entertainment industry and tech adjacent industries for over a decade. Uh, I've created many shows.

Thanks. We create many shows across YouTube, Twitch, and other new media platforms, including some shows that were in traditional Hollywood. But I'm most known for my three Emmy-winning shows. Uh, Emma approved Lizzy Bennett Diaries, which were the first and second prime time Emmy wins ever for a YouTube show, and the show Artificial, which was the first Emmy win for a Twitch show, which also won a Peabody.

Um, and it's been it's an honor to be here, guys.

Yeah, thanks for coming on the show.

Popping on.

So, uh, I mean,

rattle off your takes.

Okay. So, uh, I I don't know if my take was that, uh, contrarian or anything, but it does feel like we're at an we're at an interesting moment where potentially Hollywood is finding a stronger way to work with new media or YouTube than ever before. The Oscars are going to be streamed on YouTube in 2029, and we have backto backto back YouTube massive successes at the box office. Something that has been tried loosely before. Can you just get an audience of 10 million YouTube subscribers to show up in theaters? Hasn't always worked out, but this summer it feels like we're seeing positive success stories with uh Obsession, Back Rooms, and Iron Lung. And I'm wondering how you're interpreting those three movies. Is this an actual turning point? Has this been a slow, gradual grind for years? And maybe this is less of a of a important moment than maybe this is something only outsiders are noticing and it's been a trend that's been going on for a long time. But how have you processed the recent uh viral news around backrooms obsession, iron lung, etc.?

I mean, you you kind of said it there. I think it's a trend that's been going on for many years. So, if you um I speak at VidCon every year, for example, and I've asked every year and this kind of the same panel like when is like you when are the creators of YouTube going to take over Hollywood and all that stuff and I'm like they are already going getting there.

Yeah.

They're just not seeing it. And like you're seeing the ramp up and of course it's just getting bigger and getting bigger and getting bigger. It's like like um I think you know regarding say like the Emmys like Mr. Beast is not a YouTuber. He's a prime creator because he has a show on Prime. That's what he's going for, right? So, so these this is we're now seeing in movies as you said like now we're seeing it um in the in the last you know like you said the back to back to back run of this year

but this is something that at least I've been seeing for you know 5 years or so as this ramp up and you're kind of where you where the earlier genesis of this was is that you had this era where there was these YouTuber kind of led movies influenc influ influencer movies the movies probably weren't regarded as great movies but I think what missed the mark there was that they just kind of plugged and played a dude in there. It's like, oh, you've got 10 million followers. Let's just put you in here.

And the problem with that is that that doesn't work because it's not on brand with the audience that it's coming from, right? So,

so now with like Iron Lung and Markiplier and all that stuff, like it's his, right? It's it's his. So, it's very much him being him.

Beast Games is him being him just amplified.

And you're seeing that tech and social media play coming in all at the same time.

Yeah. I've heard a lot about this in in casting calls these days where uh actors and actresses will just get asked like, "Oh, well, do you have 10,000 on Instagram or 100,000 Instagram?" And it feels like that is it maybe it's some sort of signal, but it's not really going to move the needle on is this going to be a success at the box office if uh a few thousand people buy tickets from your audience of tens of thousands of people. It's more just like are you serious and have you figured out the Instagram algorithm to like get a bunch of views?

What do you think?

Living in LA for

most of my adult life,

I've been surprised. I've met a bunch of people who are

like work in in the in the movie business, directors, producers. And you'll ask them like, "Oh, do you do you have like a YouTube channel?" Like, and they'll be like,

"No, no, I don't I don't I don't do that." And uh it's always like surprising to me because it's basically saying like I'm going to let other people and like gatekeepers sort of like dictate my creative outcome.

Well, if you already have the key to the gate, why do you need to It's no problem for you because you're going right in.

No, I know. But no, some people like that are trying to break in. So, so personally, if I was trying to break into the movie business, I've been making movies

start digging under

like as much as possible even if they were, you know, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, you know, or just figuring out some of these other formats. Obsession really break you know like proper like like uh box office hit.

Yeah. I mean

thousand% agree. I mean, I'll add to that that like right now all these young creators like you said breaking in you you are more armed today with just tools like like not just audience but audience and tools with like the

if whether you you're on the AI side or not with the creative and the genai you have all this automation and all these like like efficiency points you can activate

I mean blender blender it's a free open-source CGI package and exactly like and and you go to Skippy Toilet and it's like made in Valve filmmaker And people are making movies in Fortnite and and Halo from a long time ago if you remember Red Versus Blue. And

another Bernie.

Yeah. And so, uh, I I I I guess my my big question is, uh, Hollywood still has an immense amount of prestige and it's still seen as the the the the Mount Everest of being a creator. If you can have a film on the silver screen and have a box office smash, that's great. Um, but in terms of economics, the YouTube revenues have to be bigger than Hollywood right now. And I I I'm not I'm not anticipating like a flipping where Hollywood comes back in the traditional sense, but I'm excited by the idea of of YouTubers being able to graduate in the more prestigious uh, you know, Hollywood film making scene. But I'm just wondering like how much of this is about cultural shelling points, these moments that bring us all together versus something that's more abstract prestige. Like what is the long-term relationship here? Because it doesn't feel like you're going to see, oh, YouTubers aren't making any money anymore and everyone went back to making money in Hollywood. It feels more like Hollywood's just getting some juice back and restructuring a little bit to bring some young talent up. But YouTube will still continue to be a behemoth in terms of monetization on ads and brand partnerships and whatnot.

Um, yeah, all of that is is accurate. I would just add clarification on like YouTube is yes, it is bigger, but it's also more diversified, right? Because just so many channels, right? It's like Hollywood puts out whatever 50 movies a year at most and you know, YouTubers are doing that one YouTuber is doing that a month, right? Yeah.

Like or not movies but videos. You get what?

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And so what kind

one Hollywood's worth of content

like every month basically

per minute per second whatever but like so what you're going toward there as far as the the business side of things is is the kind of what I call the franchising right so Hollywood is still the best place to like amplify your franchise like take something and like send it to a bunch of other places. Okay. So, uh, obviously this is a little cherry-picking, but like K-pop Demon Hunters is masterful in the sense of that it became a franchise overnight and now the irony and fun of it is that Hollywood was trying to catch up to it. It's like, oh my god, we need more everything. We're behind on the toys, we're behind on the merch, we're behind on the videos, we need another series right now, all that stuff. Okay, so it's it kind of comes handinand we're finally seeing it as you kind of mentioned at the top of this thing, which was that the YouTubers are now, okay, you know what? I'm really good here on this platform. Let's go up. let's give it a shot. Let's see if we make it work. And we're seeing successes as we as we were talking about. I'm sure there's many failures, okay? But we're seeing those successes now. And now like the Markipliers and these guys like they have basically a burgeoning franchise now. Whether it continues over years and sequels and everything doesn't mean it has to be a sequel by the way. Like if it becomes a video game.

Yeah.

And that's successful that counts. Probably more.

Totally.

Like maybe even more. Right. So like going kind of what they call trans media. It's a weird term, but like if they can jump to different formats and different avenues, that's where the if you're talking about the money, like that's where the real franchiseability of this thing comes from. And YouTubers, if anything, are actually way more nimble. I'm not saying they're better. I'm saying they're more nimble at this than Hollywood because just because the ma the the the definition of how small their teams are and how fast they can move versus these giant corporate behemoths which have tons of resources but have all this bureaucracy that could slow this the system down. So that's where we're seeing this kind of not not a clash, but like an evolution as this goes forward where I would imagine that if you're trying to franchise out one of these guys' uh these movies, it's like it's like, "All right, right. Let's let's show you how we do it, but let's also kind of get out of your way."

Yeah.

Right. Let you guys do what you do, too.

Um and see where we land. What do you think uh what do you think Obsession will do for lowbudget film funding? Like the the potential return here is so extreme. I imagine a lot of people would see this and go try to fund other projects like this or is it so so out there and so rare that people won't try to replicate it?

I mean, Hollywood loves trying to replicate. So, um we've actually seen this kind of cycle before. We've seen it with um uh Blair Witch Project, you know, over 20 years ago. We've seen kind of these versions of these like virally kind of things. Uh Par Paranormal Activity, right? Like Oh, yeah. Like these these started as very very lowbudget movies that were just very very cleverly done became sensations in their own out own way and became franchises. And you also saw this kind of wave of like found footage movies after Paranormal Activity. And like

what is it about what is it about horror movies that like is a it's a category that seems to do well with with a low budget?

Um I think I think uh it's because it's very just we it's very understandable like universally it's not a there's not a language barrier. There's no like cultural jokes you have to hit. It's universally understandable. And so it's one of those things where um like you know as much as we love comedies and we like why aren't these comedies a hit? Like it's still our cultural taste like like what's funny to us in America.

So like fear fear is like more universal than than comedy and and you can create like an extremely

scary situation with just a house in the woods, right? Or you don't need

on the production side. Yeah. Just a house in the woods works. Whereas even if you're doing a romantic comedy, you might want to shut down a street in Manhattan for a scene that's outdoors or go to some physical place and like travel around or let alone sci-fi where you have to do a whole bunch of CGI and be on the be on a spaceship or something building complex sets whereas you know you can go and film something in a

team is also saying no A-list actors. Usually it's weird to see a Marvel star in a horror movie. Why don't A-list actors?

Because it's more relatable. Because if I see Tom Cruz there, I'm like, he's not going to die. But if I see some some no-name actor, I'm like, oh, that that person could go next. I don't know who's going to be the last one standing.

So, it's kind of a it's a way for like new talent on like in front of the camera and behind the camera to try to basically break in.

So, So, you're saying we're going to see 1 million Obsession knockoffs in the next 12 months?

I mean, I don't about 1 million, but we're going to definely see some. That's for sure. Okay. Like the question is whether they're good or not and all that, but it's like going back to your your the horror, you can bring the budgets down. Like you have to pay Tom Cruz, right? If you're going to bring Tom Cruz in, you're going to pay everybody's everybody is a cost there. And if horror can just kind of generate its own audience, like, well, why are we paying for it? Like why do we need to to, you know, shell out all this money to bring in a star, a named star or someone with a big following to do this? So, it's like it's a it's a business play. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. Um, but it's historically the case. Like look at any horror franchise. It's rare to even see any type of A-list, B-list, whatever recognizable star even, you know, headlining it. Like look at, you know, the latest final def destination, right? That's a seven movie franchise, I think. And it's like even the seventh movie didn't have any really anybody any household names, okay, that were in there. Scream is a little bit of an exception. I'll give it that. But like Scream kind of built its own. Yeah. Sure. Sure. When how long until uh until you think we see a hit in theaters that had where 90% of the budget was uh AI compute?

Whoa.

A hit. Can you define hit? A hit. A hit is like over 30 million over 30 million

box office and over 3x return on budget or something like that.

It's a good question. I mean I think we're gonna see

they put 10 in they get 30 out. Like it's

somebody has to be working on it. The question is,

is it like

do they have the talent?

Are the models actually good enough?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And so we the AI in the lot was literally last week and there was a lot of stuff that came out of it, right? The Amazon announcement and like the Higsfield movie. Um uh heat check I think. What was I'm sorry if I misnamed it, but like that's a that's 100% I think or 90 it qualifies as far as your compute power situation.

Um could it do you know 30 million at the box office? I based on what people I've not seen it, but based on what I'm hearing about it, I'm going to guess no. But prove me wrong, please. Sure. Like if you're going to go for it. Uh but yeah, I do think it will come. I do I think there's two factors here, right? So one is the

Does it matter that it's AI? Like most of the most of the public worldwide audience just wants to be entertained.

Sure.

Okay. It just want to be entertained. Like if it's if it's real or not, like we've been watching CG movies for generations. It's like we just want to be entertained. Good movie or bad movie. Okay. So there's that. But right now, you still have this kind of public ritual shaming of like, oh, it's AI ban, ban, ban. And we're still seeing a bit of that coming out of AI and a lot even. So, so when we think of like experiences that like, you know, we're building, we're just like, okay,

we use a lot of AI right now. Okay. Um, and like we're just trying to build entertaining experiences. So to me, like it's I would say it's sooner than later except for just that that X factor of the viteral. Like I just don't know how to predict that one of when it'll be okay.

But but it does feel like there's someone out there who hasn't broken in yet, who has nothing to lose, who's just going to be sitting at home just prompting. Yeah.

And and it could that's why I think I think it potentially comes from somebody that nobody has heard of before.

There's also there also might be some there might be like an AI movie that could break through because it's either like self-referential or making fun of AI or doing something in a different way like like Toy Story was about toys. It wasn't replacing actors with uh w with CGI and so there there's like less of a conflict there. So, if you're doing some sort of story that could not be told without AI and it's handled the right way, like you could maybe massage it a little bit more to get there and maybe you don't jump straight to like you were expecting Tom Cruz, but it's just an AI version of Tom Cruz. Like, that's probably going to be pretty poorly received.

I mean, you're speaking my language. So, like I'm going to just slightly explain what I'm working on so it kind of relates to this.

So, we're we we're at Pigford. We're building, we showed an experience last week over at Sony which was a basically a a detective series where where the audience could interact with it in real time because the AI was writing the show as it goes. Okay, so literally impossible without the technology. Okay, so this is one where um my colleagues in the in the film making and AI spaces, we talk about well what's more exciting is not just hey let's make an AI movie. What can AI do to juice up the the form of art and narrative that we couldn't have done before? not like a possibility, right? Now, you've driven the experience to the theater, which we're going to selfplug uh do at Alamo Draft Houses around the country this year. No, we're not gonna I doubt we're going to generate $30 million like you said to as be a big hit. But, you know, we've proven at least in our small sample sizes that we can provide an inthe communal uh entertaining experience, be interactive, be consequential um as a paid ticket even and we're using AI tech and it's just like it's entertaining. Yeah, animation may be kind of a little wonky at times. The tech is very very like it's calling all this complicated data and all in real time. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. But at the end of the day, we are entertaining and that's what we are in the industry first and foremost. All the tech aside and all the business side, we that's what we're here to do, right? If we're not entertaining classic, you know, Russell Crow, are you not entertained? What are we even doing here?

So that's that's where I look at it.

Yeah, very personalization stuff is is super interesting. I had a I had a funny experience maybe 20 years ago or so. I was I was I I grew up in Pasadena and I was watching this movie in Pasadena. It's Kill Bill Tarantino. And uh and and I'm watching and uh the bride pulls up in this yellow truck and across the bottom white text pops up and it says, "This scene takes place in Pasadena, California." And I was like, "This is so weird." Like, did I buy the p the localized version of this movie? It just happens to take place in Pasadena, but you could imagine a horror film that takes place in like any town, USA that like uses your, you know, geol location to make it more customized to you. It feels more scary because you're like, "Oh, this could be happening in the right outside my window." There's a whole bunch of different ways that you could instantiate like little personalizations that would put,

you know, if you needed a scene of a car like driving past like welcome to any town, USA, generate it with a Google map.

Yeah. potentially not for every place but uh but yeah there will be I I imagine that like whatever breaks through will be newer and weirder and break boundaries and won't be a clone of uh of the things that we love like Star Wars because we have Star Wars we don't need AI version of Star Wars we need something entirely new and creative

yeah completely agree completely agree so it's like I I have this thing where I say like AI is not going to game out game of thrones game of thrones like we're not it's not going to do that like like AI can do things really fast and can fill buckets really good good with like you're trying to fill content on your feed really great at that so it's not going to do that so

on the high-end art side

the great artist will probably incorporate some little bit AI but it's not going to end to end that thing

and then on kind of your side with customization I really do think that's I'm selfishly I do think that's the play because AI is really good at speed and optimization and it's really hard to do customization without speed and optimization so now you're playing to the advantage of the technology versus the disadvantage which is the sloppiness that we're getting to. Okay.

So, not only on your side with the example, which I think is an amazing amazing example of customization for possibilities. Got me thinking about it actually. I also think it's about consequentiality, which means that did you feel like you impacted it, right? Like did you feel like while you're watching the movie, did you do something? Does it maybe it's an eye thing? Maybe it's a saying thing.

Can you feel like you're part of it? And I do think that the young generations, the Gen Zers, the AIRS and everything, they're already growing up with like a parasocial relationship to their content.

Sure.

Okay. End to end, right? And that may be also why these movies are getting successful because they're like they feel like they have a relationship to the creator and they feel like, you know, we're going to go. Um, but to feel like they have an impact in their content, I think that's where the blue sky is. That's where I feel it's coming from and that's where I'm trying to get to myself in my work.

Yeah. Make a horror movie that I can pause if it gets too scary.

And you can pause and No, no. Pause. And if I pause, you you sense it and you just tone it down a notch.

Oh, okay. It just gets less less scary.