By CHRIS McGOWAN
By CHRIS McGOWAN
Streamers continue to command a growing share of TV viewership. Led by YouTube and Netflix, many high-profile releases from the big film and TV studios look to raise the VFX bar this year and in the future. In addition, the vast universe of influencers, podcasters and other creatives on YouTube and elsewhere is greatly expanding the overall use of visual effects.
Current and coming soon effects-heavy titles include Snow White, The Electric State, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Tron: Ares, Superman, Wicked: For Good [Part Two], Avengers: Doomsday, The Mandalorian and Grogu, Avengers: Secret Wars, Animal Friends, The Cat in the Hat, Predator: Badlands, Frankenstein (directed by Guillermo del Toro), 28 Years Later and Avatar: Fire and Ash, as well as confirmed series Stranger Things Season 5, Wednesday Season 2, Squid Game Season 3, Ironheart, Star City, Alien: Earth, It: Welcome to Derry, Peacemaker Season 2, Murderbot, Blade Runner 2099 and The Last of Us Season 2.
According to the firm’s January 21, 2025, Letter to Shareholders, Netflix finished 2024 with 302 million subscribers worldwide, leading the field. For the year, “Revenue grew 16% and operating margin expanded six points to 27%. Operating income exceeded $10B for the first time in our history. In Q4, revenue increased 16% year over year, helped by 19M paid net adds, while operating income rose 52% year over year. Our Q4 slate outperformed even our high expectations. The Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight became the most-streamed sporting event ever, and on Christmas Day we delivered the two most-streamed NFL games in history,” according to the Netflix shareholder’s letter.
“Creators are bringing that startup mindset to Hollywood: leaning into new production models, building studios to elevate their production quality and exploring new creative avenues. They are creating a whole new playing field for entertainment and the businesses behind them.”
—Neal Mohan, CEO, You
“Netflix notched a 14% increase over the previous interval. While some of that was attributable to the two NFL games, calculations showed the streamer’s monthly usage would have been up 11% even if contributions from the games were excluded,” according to Nielsen’s December 2024 The Gauge. “Netflix benefited from its action thriller film Carry-On, which generated 5.2 billion viewing minutes from Dec. 13–29 and achieved the third-most streamed title of the interval. It also received a boost following the Season 2 premiere of Squid Game, which accumulated 4.9 billion viewing minutes in the final week of the interval. It also notched the highest weekly total [measured Monday through Sunday] for any streaming title in 2024.”
Also, according to The Gauge, “Prime Video reached a platform best 4.0% share of TV, as it benefited from hosting five NFL Thursday Night Football games, including one on Black Friday during the December interval, as well as from its holiday blockbuster film Red One, which racked up 5.6 billion viewing minutes as the month’s top streaming title. Prime Video also saw success from its new original reality series Beast Games starring YouTuber Jimmy ‘MrBeast’ Donaldson, with over 700 million viewing minutes accumulated across its first three episodes.” In addition, “Max garnered an 18% monthly viewing increase in December, the largest among all streaming platforms with upticks driven by its deep library of available shows like The Big Bang Theory and Friends, as well as newcomer Dune: Prophecy,” according to The Gauge.
By subscriber totals, the top 10 streamers were Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Max, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, Apple TV+, ESPN+ and Starz, according to Digital Trends.
Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns Max, said in a February shareholder letter that it added 6.4 million global streaming subscribers in the fourth quarter for a total of 116.9 million subscribers. Fourth-quarter revenue for the streaming segment totaled $2.65 billion, up 5% from $2.53 billion in the same quarter last year. The company said it has a “clear path” to hit 150 million global subscribers by the end of 2026. Amazon Prime has over 200 million subscribers, according to the firm. And Disney+ hit 153.6 million subscribers in 2024, according to Statista and other analysts.
Meanwhile, YouTube garnered the largest slice of streaming TV viewing time, 11.1%, in December 2024, according to Nielsen, followed by Netflix (8.5%), Prime Video (4.0%), Disney+ (2.1%), Roku (2.0%), Tubi (1.7%), Peacock (1.6%), Paramount+ (1.4%), Max (1.2%) and Pluto (0.9%). YouTubers are becoming the startups of Hollywood, according to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan in the company’s February 11, 2025, blog post. He comments, “Every thriving industry needs a healthy startup culture. Creators are bringing that startup mindset to Hollywood: leaning into new production models, building studios to elevate their production quality and exploring new creative avenues. They are creating a whole new playing field for entertainment and the businesses behind them.”
Mohan continues, “Last November, I attended the opening of Alan Chikin Chow’s 10,000-square-foot studio in Burbank. It was a bold, fun and colorful space filled with cutting-edge equipment that produces incredible entertainment watched by millions around the world.” Chow is an American actor, digital creator, producer, writer and influencer. He is one of the highest-ranking YouTube shorts creators with over 82 million subscribers (as of March 3) and the creator of the YouTube series Alan’s Universe. Mohan adds, “This isn’t just happening in Hollywood. Kinigra Deon is building a studio in Birmingham, Alabama, and last November the creators behind channels Mia Plays and Kouman opened their studio in North Vancouver.”
Mohan says, “As we look ahead, we’ll continue investing in AI tools that empower creators and artists throughout their creative journey. Last year, we rolled out Dream Screen and Dream Track which generate image backgrounds, video backgrounds and instrumental soundtracks for Shorts. We’ll continue investing in these features, including integrating Veo 2 into Dream Screen soon.” He adds, “As impressive as the generative models are, creators tell us they’re most excited about the ways AI can help with their bread-and-butter production. That’s why we’re investing in tools to help them in the everyday work of creation, like coming up with a new video idea, title or thumbnail.”
Mohan continues, “For more and more people, watching TV means watching YouTube. On average, viewers are watching over [one billion] hours of YouTube content on TVs daily, and TV is now the primary device for YouTube viewing in the U.S. But the ‘new’ television doesn’t look like the ‘old’ television. It’s interactive and includes things like shorts – yes, people watch them on TVs, podcasts and live streams alongside the sports, sitcoms and talk shows people already love.”
Corridor Digital is an independent L.A.-based production studio known for creating pop-culture-related viral online short videos. It has also produced and directed the web series Rush: Inspired by Battlefield and the YouTube Premium series Lifeline. It has also made television commercials for various companies, including Google. Corridor Digital is another example of YouTube helping to expand production and post-production.
Because of YouTube and other platforms, a substantial new arena for VFX has emerged. Corridor Digital Co-Founder and Creative Director, Niko Pueringer, comments, “YouTube creates a market for teams that can deliver a complete product top-to-bottom. While the traditional media industry is composed of many specialists working together, YouTube is a different beast. If you can deliver a finished product and include VFX as part of your skillset, you can stand out. In that way, it has created an additional market for effects, but not in the same way a film creates specialized VFX artist jobs.” The tools used on YouTube for VFX are “all the same ones used in traditional production. Resolve, Blender, Nuke, Fusion, Houdini, After Effects, etc. As an artist, you have to be willing and able to pick up new tools as they develop and evolve,” Pueringer says.
In trends of VFX usage on YouTube, Pueringer notes, “As more and more people unlock powers of 3D animation and image manipulation, I’m seeing a trend away from polished cinematic content and towards personal unique visions and concepts that were previously too niche – and too expensive – to be brought to life in the traditional system. VFX are losing its high barrier to entry, and video creators are seeing a bloom of visual styles because of it. Educational videos now have incredible motion graphics, and many artists that may have struggled for recognition now have a personal brand and audience.”
Of course, the big streamers are altering the VFX landscape in more sophisticated and cutting-edge ways. Matt Aitken, Head of VFX at Wētā FX, comments, “The advent of streaming has opened up a host of new opportunities for Wētā FX to create high-quality digital visual effects. Prior to streaming, we were unable to contribute to series-based work, as the budgets weren’t there to support our involvement. But with the movie and episodic work we are now undertaking with our many streaming clients, we get to work on a much wider range of projects. Our three Emmy wins to date underscore that we approach this work with the same level of commitment as we do our work for cinema release.”
“YouTube creates a market for teams that can deliver a complete product top-to-bottom. While the traditional media industry is composed of many specialists working together, YouTube is a different beast. If you can deliver a finished product and include VFX as part of your skillset, you can stand out. In that way, it has created an additional market for effects, but not in the same way a film creates specialized VFX artist jobs.”
—Niko Pueringer, Co-Founder and Creative Director, Corridor Digital
Regarding current trends experienced by streamers, Aiken explains, “Our work in the streaming space is subject to the same trends as our more traditional work: greater complexity of the visual effects work, a push for high quality, particularly in the digital performance and simulation spaces, and reduced budgets. Interestingly, a trend that was initially more common in the streaming space, delivering final frames at 4K resolution, is now more widespread across our projects for cinema release as well.” Aitken sees the outlook for streamers and VFX studios in 2025 and 2026 as positive. He says, “There is a lot of high-end work being discussed, and there are opportunities to partner with key creatives to support them bringing their ideas to the screen and engaging with audiences on a global scale. We are excited to continue those collaborations.”
On the globalization of production and VFX, Aitken says, “I don’t think that streaming is increasing the globalization of production and VFX in and of itself. That being said, we work with crew across multiple time zones on most of our projects, including for streaming platforms, where leveraging the benefits and mitigating the challenges is core to delivery. Ultimately, we see this global trend as a positive: our creative hubs in Melbourne and Vancouver have brought talented artists into the Wētā FX family that we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work with otherwise.
Wētā FX is currently in post-production on visual effects work for seven projects in the streaming space. Aitken notes, “Not all of those are announced yet, but we are very excited to be working again with Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann and the team at HBO Max on Season 2 of The Last of Us.”
