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TikTok creator Bryce Hall. Photo courtesy of "Skillhouse"
Hello!
Influencers aren’t just appearing on TV screens, but also increasingly on big screens. On Friday, a new horror film starring digital creators called “Skillhouse” will premiere in some AMC and Regal showhouses.
The film follows 10 fictional influencers who are lured into a content house where they have to compete in social media challenges and rack up likes in order to survive. The cast includes Bryce Hall, who rose to early fame on TikTok as a member of the Sway House group, and Hannah Stocking, a Vine star who later created comedy videos on YouTube. (The film is shot in the Los Angeles house where the Sway House boys lived and filmed TikTok videos in 2020.)
They appear alongside rapper 50 Cent and actors such as Neal McDonough, who has had supporting roles in major TV shows including “Desperate Housewives” and “Yellowstone,” and Leah Pipes,who starred in the CW drama “The Originals” and horror film “Sorority Row.”
The inclusion of real-life influencers helped the filmmakers make the characters more realistic. Hall, for example, said he showed other actors how to look more like creators when they were filming videos of themselves in the movie. At the same time, the influencers could take cues from the more seasoned actors involved. Hall said he also took two months of acting classes in order to prepare for the role.
The film—which also gives a dark, satirical look at the pitfalls of chasing virality—is the latest example of how Hollywood is incorporating creators. It’s a trend that Josh Stolberg, the director of “Skillhouse,”expects to continue.
“When you say watch a movie these days, you’re not thinking about the big screen. When my kids say ‘movie,’ it might be on their phone,” said Stolberg, who was one of the writers for the hit horror franchise “Saw” and the romcom “Good Luck Chuck” starring Dane Cook and Jessica Alba.
“There will be a much more rapid merge of this so that there’s less difference between television, movies and social media. It’s all going to come together in some way,” he added.
Involving influencers in films also helps lower marketing costs because they can promote the movie to their followers online. That’s also why more creators are being invited to appear on red carpets for a film’s premiere to help drum up more buzz.
“Instead of getting all these billboards, just having social media creators post about it,” means less marketing spending, Hall said. “With social media people in the movie, it’s more organic.”
Stolberg says that Hollywood studios are “definitely marching in that direction” of casting more influencers. But the approach comes with downsides. For one, influencers’ careers can be short lived. By the time a film comes out—in the case of “Skillhouse,” three years later—the person may have been cancelled or “done something crazy,” he said.
Still, studios are open to the idea.
“I have not been into a studio meeting where somebody doesn’t turn and say, ‘What’s their follower count?’” Stolberg said. “It’s both exciting … but it also is a little bit frustrating to me as a filmmaker because I like to cast people based on their talent, and not just their follower count.”
Here’s what else is going on…
Deals & Debuts
See The Information’s Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors.
YouTube has told creators that it will launch a new feature that allows them to share more data about their channel and audience to potentially be discovered by advertisers for brand deals, shopping affiliate offers and revenue ads, according to Social Media Today. A YouTube spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Google launched a new Gemini AI feature that turns photos into videos. The new function is powered by its Veo 3 model, and it can turn images into eight-second videos with AI-generated audio.
TikTok released a statement saying that a Reuters story that said TikTok’s new U.S. app is expected to operate on a separate algorithm and data system from the global version was “factually inaccurate.” It didn’t elaborate further on which part was “inaccurate” and a spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Cameo, the celebrity video shoutout app, launched a new birthday planning app called Candl.The app, which seems to be an attempt to revive growth, syncs birthdays from a user’s saved contacts and creates a calendar with birthdays and reminders.
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