(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.)
First off, thank you to everyone who either sent me or offered to send me the 2025 Blacklist screenplays! It’s much appreciated, and I hope to re-run that analysis next month or so. I’ve got some big writing/research projects coming up (including my content recap for 2025 and a deep dive into a very buzzy topic) then the Black List scripts are next up on my list.
Okay, time for part two of “What I Got Right/Wrong”. Yesterday’s article had no paywall, but today’s article will be pretty heavily paywalled. I try to strike a balance in my articles, providing solid insights for every subscriber, free and paid. Free subscribers usually get at least a thousand words before the paywall, but the paying subscribers get even more insights and data (usually a lot more, like thousands of words), after the paywall.
Again, today’s paywall is a bit stricter than normal, partly because I’m covering two possibly-controversial-because-of-the-media’s-coverage/hyperbole topics:
- RIGHT: MrBeast/Beast Industries’ sky-high valuations (possibly getting debunked)
- WRONG: Markiplier’s big box office grosses, and what you can actually take away from those grosses if you’re a filmmaker or creator (including two brief case studies).
Let’s dive right in!
RIGHT: Did Beast Industries Fool the Media in 2025?
In a recent episode of Ed Zitron’s podcast—which, by the way, has the best explanation of how ClaudeBot/MoltBot actually works that I’ve heard—Zitron and Cal Newport briefly debated whether or not the financial press holds businesses to account. Newport asserted that they do, because traders need accurate information, but Zitron asserted that, when it comes to AI, they don’t.
In my experience, when it comes to the creator economy, the hype machine is in overdrive, including by the financial press.
So let’s talk MrBeast and Beast Industries.
To be clear, I don’t dislike Jimmy Donaldson (aka “MrBeast”), and in fact, I respect the hell out of what he has accomplished—the dude executed a brilliant YouTube strategy—but much of the media treats him with kid gloves. Heck, I’d go further and say a lot of the media actually goes out of their way to hype him up instead of asking skeptical questions.
Last December, I noted a deliberate trend where companies leaked the valuations they were “seeking” to friendly media outlets (business, entertainment and straight news outlets). To be clear, seeking does not mean “achieved” (and I’d wager half the leaked valuations we see aren’t even real). Sadly, if a company doesn’t achieve the valuation it sought, we never hear an update about it.
(Side note: Once you see this, you can’t unsee it. In January, I saw headlines about so many different companies, ranging from OpenAI to SpaceX, “seeking valuations”.)
At the time, I noted that MrBeast hadn’t actually secured funding, so we didn’t know if he’d hit that benchmark. Yet this January, MrBeast did secure a deal with a…
Hmm. Yeah, that checks out. Did he get his $5 billion valuation? Did anyone tell us that?
Nope.
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