Your Studio Development Deal Was Written for Someone Without an Audience
Your Studio Development Deal Was Written for Someone
Without an Audience
Disney spent two days in September hosting hundreds of
creators at the El Capitan Theatre and on its Burbank lot for Created
in LA. Asad Ayaz, Disney's chief marketing and brand officer, led a session
called "Your Next Big Project with Disney," outlining opportunities
in scripted series, features, and brand campaigns. In August, Disney ordered
20 episodes from Dhar Mann Studios.
The interest is real. Studios increasingly see creators as
sources of original programming, not just promotional reach. But the commercial
opportunity comes with a contractual problem.
A creator with an established audience is not arriving
empty-handed. They already have a distribution business, a publishing schedule,
commercial relationships, and potentially valuable intellectual property. Yet a
broadly drafted studio agreement can treat all of that as incidental to the
services or rights the studio is buying.
Look at what worked this year. Curry Barker made Obsession
independently for a reported $750,000. After its Toronto premiere, Focus
Features acquired worldwide distribution rights in a deal reportedly worth $14
million to $15 million. Kane Parsons built an audience for his interpretation
of Backrooms on YouTube before developing a feature adaptation with A24
and Chernin Entertainment. The film opened to approximately $81.5
million domestically, the biggest opening in A24's history.
Different paths, same lesson. Barker brought a completed
film to the market. Parsons brought an established audience and a demonstrated
appetite for his storytelling. Neither needed a studio to establish that people
wanted what they were making.
That changes the negotiation. Or at least it should.
The asset the studio is buying is your calendar
An overall deal can purchase your exclusive services. A
first-look deal generally gives the studio priority access to defined projects
before you take them elsewhere. The restrictions are different, but both can
interfere with an existing creator business if the agreement is drafted too
broadly.
In an exclusive overall deal, the operative language might
require you to render services exclusively to the studio in theatrical motion
pictures and television and prohibit services for third parties in that field
without consent.
Apply that provision to someone who uploads weekly, produces
a podcast, sells merchandise, tours, and completes several brand integrations
each quarter. The problem is immediate.
If "television" or "audiovisual content"
is defined to include programming distributed by any means now known or later
devised, your YouTube channel may fall within the restricted field. So might a
sponsored video, a livestream, or a new series produced for your own audience.
These provisions are often broad at the outset of
negotiations. In my experience on the studio side, that breadth is frequently
intentional, with the expectation that counsel will negotiate appropriate
exclusions.
But an existing creator business should not depend on an
informal understanding that the studio will leave it alone.
The fix is a schedule, not an argument. Identify the
existing channels by handle, along with successor accounts and replacement
platforms. Name the podcast, the newsletter, the merchandise business, live
appearances, and brand integrations. Expressly reserve the right to operate,
monetize, and expand those businesses.
Then define what availability the studio is actually buying.
Specify the services, delivery obligations, competing commitments, and, where
commercially feasible, a cap on the days the studio can require. Exclusivity
should have a defined field and practical boundaries.
First look and last refusal are two separate rights
They are often negotiated together, but they do different
things.
A first look requires you to submit covered material to the
studio before offering it elsewhere. A right of last refusal, where separately
granted, can give the studio another opportunity to match a bona fide
third-party offer after it has declined the project.
The dangerous part is often the definition of covered
material.
If the submission obligation reaches everything conceived,
acquired, or developed during the term, an idea that begins as a video for your
own channel could become something you were contractually required to submit.
And if the agreement also preserves a matching right, passing on the project
may not be the end of the studio's involvement.
That continuing right carries a cost. An outside buyer may
be reluctant to spend time and money negotiating an offer that another studio
can simply match.
Three fixes.
Define covered material narrowly, by project type and
intended use. A written pitch prepared for premium scripted development should
not automatically include every concept tested on your own platforms.
Exclude existing channel programming and its continuations,
extensions, and adaptations unless specifically submitted by agreement.
Finally, put a firm deadline on the studio's response, with
an automatic deemed pass if it misses the deadline. Ten business days is a
reasonable creator-side opening ask where leverage supports it, even if the
final negotiated period is longer. Any continuing matching right should also
have a defined duration and process.
The studio can have a first look without keeping the project
tied up indefinitely.
The grant, and the lane you still have to feed
This is where the negotiation moves from your availability
to the underlying property.
Studios may seek rights in existing audiovisual works,
scripts, characters, series elements, trademarks, and adaptations. A general
format idea is not necessarily protected by copyright, but the original
expression and identifiable assets surrounding a successful series can carry
substantial value.
A creator may think they are licensing a feature adaptation
of something they already make on YouTube. The studio's grant may reach much
further, particularly if it includes exclusive derivative-work rights,
restrictions on similar productions, and broad holdbacks.
The result can be a contract that restricts the creator's
ability to continue developing the very property that attracted the studio.
Parsons has publicly said he intends to keep
making Backrooms content on YouTube, even as the
property expands into theatrical films. His private rights arrangements are not
public, so we cannot know precisely how those activities are allocated
contractually. But the issue is exactly the one creator counsel should be
addressing.
The grant should separate the studio's rights in the new
project from the creator's continuing rights in existing programming. Reserve
the ability to produce and monetize the original channel series, subject only
to specifically negotiated restrictions. Define the field of use, permitted
derivative works, and any exclusivity or holdback period.
License rather than assign where you can. Make any holdback
expire on a date or objective milestone. Do not assume that because the studio
is buying a feature, it has no interest in controlling the series, characters,
or brand from which that feature originated.
What is usually missing
The protections outside the headline fee can be as important
as the rights expressly granted.
- Turnaround
and reversion. If the studio does not move forward, establish when rights
can be recovered, what costs are reimbursable, and whether interest or
overhead applies. Limit the recovery price and create a realistic window
to move the project elsewhere. Applicable guild provisions may also affect
reacquisition rights.
- Audit
and contingent compensation. Define revenue, deductions, participations,
and cross-collateralization rather than relying on a promise to account in
good faith. Require regular statements and meaningful audit rights.
- Credit
and publicity. Specify contractual credits and negotiate approval or
consultation rights over the use of your name, likeness, channel identity,
and brand in marketing, recognizing that applicable guild rules may govern
certain credits.
- Continuity
if the executive leaves. The executive who champions a project may not be
there to see it produced. Consider a defined reassessment, replacement
executive, or release mechanism if development stalls after a key
departure.
- Indemnification.
Allocate liability based on which party supplies, owns, and controls the
relevant materials. A studio should be responsible for its own additions
and uses, with appropriate treatment of intellectual property claims and
liability caps.
- Audience
data. Address who can access subscriber and audience information, what it
can be used for, whether it can be retained, and when it must be deleted.
Where personal information is processed on another party's behalf, include
the data protection terms required for that relationship.
None of these provisions works in isolation. A narrow rights
grant can still be undermined by expansive exclusivity, approval, or
noncompetition language elsewhere in the agreement.
The two-schedule rule
Every creator studio development agreement should have two
schedules.
One identifies what the studio is getting: covered projects,
services, submission obligations, licensed rights, exclusivity, and the
applicable term.
The other identifies what stays yours: existing businesses,
channels, series, formats, brands, audience relationships, commercial
commitments, and the right to continue building them.
The second schedule matters because these are not merely
side projects. For an established creator, they may be the primary business.
Without a clear reservation, the creator may spend years
arguing over whether a new upload, sponsorship, adaptation, or distribution
opportunity falls within the studio's rights. That is a fight that should
happen at the drafting table, not after the studio has passed on the project.
Disney has been here before. It reportedly paid $675 million to
acquire Maker Studios in 2014, then dramatically reduced its creator
network and folded the remaining operation into Disney's digital business.
What has changed is the scale of creator-driven
distribution. In July 2026, YouTube accounted for 14.2
percent of all measured television viewing in the United States, compared
with Disney's 8.9 percent. That does not mean an individual creator has
YouTube's negotiating power. It means the distribution ecosystem that creators
have built their businesses around is no longer peripheral to traditional
entertainment.
A creator's audience is not just publicity for a studio
project. It is often the reason the studio wants the deal in the first place.
The leverage exists before the first draft. Keeping it means
putting it in the agreement.