Dhar Mann was explaining his business to the woman in the next seat on a flight. He described a studio with about 170 million followers, 75 sets and five to seven hours of premium scripted content a week. She asked whether he ran Paramount or Lionsgate. Then she asked where the content was distributed.

“Well, on YouTube,” Mann told her. “As soon as I said that, I kid you not, she completely checked out.”

Mann recounted the exchange at MIPCOM Cannes 2026, where he received the inaugural Future of Entertainment Award. The audience laughed, recognizing the reflex. Across the market, the conversation had moved on. Broadcasters and streamers are no longer the only buyers. Brands, platforms, telcos and creator-led studios are changing who pays for entertainment and who keeps the rights.

Dhar Mann Studios And The New Economics Of Television

In an interview ahead of MIPCOM, Sean Atkins, CEO of Dhar Mann Studios, described how creators can reach huge audiences at a fraction of television’s production costs.

By his comparison, feature films cost $1 million to $3 million a minute, premium broadcast drama about $500,000 and cable around $50,000. Creators work at tens of dollars a minute. “The logarithmic curve is more attached to the economics than it is attached to the audience,” he told me.

Ken O, CEO of CJ ENM Studios, illustrated the pressure on traditional producers. He said on stage that he made What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim in 2018 for about $400,000 an episode. The same show would now cost three times as much, even as Korean channels and cinemas lose audience.

When Atkins joined Dhar Mann Studios two and a half years ago, roughly 95% of revenue came from YouTube and Facebook platform payouts, Mann told the MIPCOM audience. That share is now below 40%, with brands, Fox, Disney and Samsung TV Plus providing new revenue. I profile the company separately .

Jane Turton, deputy CEO of Banijay Entertainment following its merger with All3Media , sees a similar shift. Where producers once had four or five buyers, they now have “handfuls, plural,” including brands and YouTube. Cable commissions were “fully funded,” but producers gave up rights. On YouTube, she says, “the rights remain with you. But you are massively on risk.”

Creators approach that risk differently. “In TV, there’s this intense fear and all this drama around creating a pilot,” Adam Cohen, head of Sidemen Productions, said during a sports IP panel. “A YouTuber, they have to do that every week. There are fifty-two pilots a year that have to go out.”

Who Pays For Premium Microdramas?

Vertical drama was a recurring theme at MIPCOM Cannes 2026. Omdia forecasts global microdrama revenue of $14.1 billion this year, 75% of it in China. Of the roughly $3.5 billion elsewhere, the U.S. accounts for 44%, while the U.S., Brazil and Mexico lead in usage.

Much of the business relies on viewers paying per episode or subscribing to apps. High acquisition costs and short viewing cycles force those apps to keep spending on marketing.

Three alternatives are emerging. Orange Middle East and Africa agreed to distribute ReelShort through its Max it TV service in 17 markets, reaching viewers through a telecom operator rather than app downloads alone.

Brands are financing content. ReelShort produced six branded microdramas in 2026 for advertisers including Crocs, Monopoly Go and Anker SOLIX.

Archives offer another route. Rosebery is repurposing Fremantle’s Neighbours archive into vertical episodes for Epis, beginning with Margot Robbie’s storylines, finding new value in existing programming.

These models shaped Microdramas Go Premium, the panel I moderated. Each company had a different payer. GammaTime cofounder Alex Montalvo earns from subscriptions, in-app purchases and advertising. Venture-backed Shorta, cofounded by Tomás Escobar, relies mainly on subscribers. Banijay Finland’s Survival Sisters was commissioned by public broadcaster Yle. A+E Global Media will offer sponsors its vertical originals on mylifetime.com before relicensing them worldwide.

Brian Weiss, who leads strategy and business development at A+E Global Media, rejected the high-spend app model. “We do not want to be in the paid marketing game,” he said. “We build enduring brands, enduring content that can be relicensed forever.”

The apps compete on testing as much as budgets. “We operate content as software,” Escobar said, with several versions of a show running at once to see which “hooks better” and “retains better.” When viewers drop off, Montalvo said, GammaTime can “re-edit episode six, put it right back up on platform.”

Even “premium” is contested. Montalvo defined it as content audiences find “worth paying for.” Sammie Hao, head of talent and business development at ReelShort, told me how a low-cost production became a hit while expensive details on another failed to resonate. “I’m really bothered by the concept of premium micro drama,” she says. Bigger budgets do not guarantee bigger returns.

Can AI Lower The Cost Of Making Films?

Utopai Studios presented its case for AI’s potential to change production economics at MIPCOM Cannes 2026.

Opening the MIP AI Entertainment Forum, cofounder Cecilia Shen argued that AI should expand filmmaking, not replace filmmakers. “The technology is not the filmmaker,” she said. “The next Hollywood will not be a place. It will be a network.”

When I met Shen and Utopai CEO Kevin Wong at Cannes, Wong described the company’s evolution from an AI research firm into a studio spanning development, production and distribution. It has built a pipeline of more than 25 projects in 18 months, with three features and two series entering production for release in 2027.

Wong estimates that Utopai’s AI-assisted animated features take 12 months to make, against three years for conventional animation, at roughly one-tenth of a Pixar or DreamWorks budget. These are company estimates, not independently verified or like-for-like comparisons.

“It’s everything hybrid,” Shen told me, with human writers, directors and voice casts. Utopai plans theatrical releases before streaming. The test is whether an AI-native studio can attract paying cinema audiences.

How Brands Are Financing Entertainment Production

Brands are moving beyond sponsorship to finance and distribute entertainment. At Cannes, I spoke with Michael McKenna and Hanah Draper of Final Pixel about producing LEGO Friends: Heartlake The Musical , with Kenny Ortega as executive producer.

Their live-animation approach combines real actors, Unreal Engine and LED virtual production. They told me 90% to 95% of the image was captured in camera, reducing post-production and allowing completion in 18 months, against the four to five years they estimate for a conventional VFX pipeline.

LEGO financed the musical, which premiered October 16 on its YouTube channel, with Netflix, Peacock, Tubi, RTL and AMC Networks carrying it in select markets.

“You’re then getting Hollywood kind of content quality that’s accessible to a brand,” Draper says. The model gives brands greater control over distribution.

How TikTok Is Moving From Marketing To Production

In my closing keynote conversation with Dennis Papirowski, TikTok’s global head of content, we explored how creators and communities increasingly influence entertainment development as well as promotion.

TikTok says more than 12 million film and TV posts are created daily. Posts about Sinners rose almost fivefold after its opening weekend, Papirowski said on stage, while the film’s second-weekend box office fell just 4.8%. TikTok’s Spotlight feature links fan videos to a title page where viewers can buy tickets or find the film on a streaming service. Audience activity has become part of how studios market films.

TikTok is also moving into production. It announced a deal with Made By Us Studios to co-produce creator-led microseries, beginning with Player , starring Hannah Stocking, and The Knock , starring Adam Rose. Its first microseries, Screen Time with Issa Rae’s Hoorae, has drawn 570 million views, Papirowski said.

Papirowski sees microseries as a way to test ideas before bigger investments. They can be “the litmus test” of whether IP, storylines and characters resonate with an audience, he said. He expects creators to use a successful microseries as “proof of concept” to win funding, and urged studios to bring creators in “at the very beginning” of development rather than at the end.

Mann’s fellow passenger stopped listening at the word YouTube. In Cannes this year, it was the word that made buyers lean in.