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Sony hands Screen Gems to a YouTube executive after a summer of creator-made horror hits

Aaron Harme

Sony Pictures has put a YouTube executive in charge of Screen Gems, its genre label behind Resident Evil and Underworld. The Hollywood Reporter reported Friday that Fede Goldenberg, YouTube’s head of film and TV partnerships since 2017, will run the label as it starts developing theatrical movies from “digital-native storytellers,” filmmakers who built an audience online before any studio was involved. Ashley Brucks, president since 2023, moves to a producing role.

THR called it the first time a studio division has reoriented itself toward that talent pool. “Some of the most exciting new filmmakers and ideas are emerging from creators outside of traditional Hollywood development pipelines,” said Sanford Panitch, president of Sony’s motion picture group.

This summer’s box office made the case for him. Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, which grew out of his own YouTube short and a piece of internet folklore, cost about $10 million and opened to $81 million, a record for A24, Variety reported in June. Curry Barker’s Obsession was made for $750,000. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, and Focus Features’ release of it has become the label’s highest-grossing ever, according to THR.

Iron Lung is the cleanest example. Mark Fischbach, who posts as Markiplier, paid its $3 million budget himself. Every studio passed and no festival took it, so he released it on his own and asked fans to write or call their local theaters. He told Variety he expected 200 to 400. It opened in 4,161. Goldenberg drove the film’s exclusive digital release on YouTube.

A studio’s development office exists to answer one question before a movie is made: will anyone show up? It pays for scripts, rewrites and test screenings, and it still guesses. On YouTube that question gets answered video by video, in front of everyone, before a studio is in the room. Parsons’ 2022 short that became Backrooms has 81 million views. Barker’s horror short “The Chair” drew 5.5 million before he pitched Obsession.

When a studio finally calls, the audience is already counted, and the creator usually owns the story. “We don’t gatekeep, we don’t fund and we don’t own the IP,” Kim Larson, YouTube’s head of creators and gaming, told Variety. IP here means the rights to the characters and the world. What a studio brings to that table is money, marketing and theaters, and the price has gone up to match. Universal and Blumhouse Atomic Monster signed Barker to what THR called “a rich eight-figure deal” for his next original, bought off a pitch. Puck reported that A24 was weighing a three-year first-look deal for Parsons, giving it first rights to what he makes next, worth an estimated $65 million, which Complex notes would be the biggest A24 has offered.

Those deals are bids for creators after their movies have already opened. Sony’s hire is a bet on the step before that: the person who has spent 15 years in YouTube’s partnerships office and can see who has an audience before the box office does. Sony is handing development to the platform and keeping the expensive back half, marketing and distribution.

Horror has always rewarded cheap bets found by someone with an eye. Brucks, the executive Goldenberg replaces, brought the original Paranormal Activity to Paramount, a found-footage film that grew into a nearly $1 billion franchise. Screen Gems is doing fine the old way, too: Insidious: Out of the Further has taken in $169.5 million worldwide since its mid-August release, Deadline reports.

Goldenberg was also one of the YouTube executives behind the platform’s deal to air the Oscars.

Sources

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