The breakout success of YouTube creators is diminishing the influence of the industry’s older generation, according to vet German executive Robert Franke.
The likes of Kane Parsons, Curry Barker and Markiplier have helmed successful movies of late, giving the box office a huge shot in the arm.
Franke told a Seriencamp audience this is “scary as f**k” for the older generation “because we used to know that if we pour something into a distribution funnel, it will find its audience.”
“What a lot of people in my age cohort are experiencing is a loss of influence and the fact that the happy days are over,” he told a panel titled “Rethinking Story Development Through Culture Thinking” in Cologne. “There is not that much money pouring into a limited amount of content. And now we are dealing with the total fragmentation of choice.”
Franke said it is no longer enough for experienced executives to say, “I know what’s best because I went to Harvard.” “If you don’t have the humility to understand your perspective might not be valid for other communities, you are not going to tell an authentic story,” he said. “You can be part of something but you cannot own that thing you are trying to create.”
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Franke was referencing the new generation of breakout YouTube creators but stressed that the likes of Parsons and his hit A24 movie Backrooms remains in many senses within the system.
“Backrooms is a traditionally produced movie from a system and everyone is like, ‘Oh wow A24 is so innovative’,” he added. “But they are a studio. They abandoned the hyper fixation of algorithmic thinking and have a position.”
Nowadays, Franke said when legacy players find big hits like Adolescence, they often come from what initially appear to be smaller bets. “Adolescence in a way is the smaller stuff that became a cultural phenomenon,” he added. “It grows in the fringes of platforms and was commissioned because it doesn’t hurt the commissioners who greenlighted it [if it fails].”
Franke was with ZDF for a decade before moving to run The Swarm producer Intaglio Films last year. He was in Cologne at Seriencamp speaking alongside Steve Matthews, Banijay’s Joint Head of Scripted, Creative.
Matthews said traditional scripted players need to speed up development and learn from unscripted in order to get zeitgeist-y stuff on screen as quickly as possible. “If you want quality, something that requires three drafts, well the lead times are excruciating,” he added. “I’m trying to see what we can learn in Banijay from the unscripted guys who look at us and say, ‘How are you still alive. It takes five years for your thing to get to screen’.”
‘Heated Rivalry’: including the fans
Elsewhere, Jeannette Bohné and Franziska Gregor, who run German creative agency Serviceplan, which advises on marketing campaigns for buzzy shows, said fans need to be part of these campaigns from the start.
They pointed to Heated Rivalry, the biggest show of the year, which took the super-fans of the books from social media and included them when promoting the show.
“It’s important not to just look for a topic,” added Bohné. “Saying, ‘Oh queer people love love too, let’s make a queer story’ is not good. It’s about looking for narrative tension. And we can’t just write about a certain topic, we have to write it from within. It all starts with how something feels.”
Bohné criticized people who thought only queer men would enjoy Heated Rivalry, for example.
“How can you be surprised that women like gay sex?’” she added.
Seriencamp runs from today to June 11. Speaking next is Anke Greifeneder, Deadline’s German TV Disruptor 2026.