The next Yellowstone?

This is part two of a two-part series by Paula Mejía on what happens to Hollywood IP during an economic downturn. You can read part one here.

In Hollywood, a single weekend can change everything. When a slew of new releases—Bong Joon Ho’s latest, Mickey 17, and the critically adored spy caper Black Bag among them—flopped at the box office last month, panic set in. The malaise wasn’t expected to lift until May-ish. Then came the gaming behemoth A Minecraft Movie (raking in $816 million globally thus far), The King of Kings, an animated flick about Jesus ($59 million) and, of course, Sinners ($163 million) over three smash weekends in April. 

These wild week to week swings can lead to the green-lighting and burying alike of longstanding projects. It’s indicative of how “the business is very much [Monday] morning quarterback,” says film producer Troy Craig Poon, like the sports pundits that analyze the weekend’s games and make definitive, often grand calculations with this gift of hindsight. “After the weekend, people look at what was successful; Minecraft is successful,” Poon adds. “So every studio is like, ‘what video game IP do we have already in development? Or what video game IP is popular that maybe isn't spoken for?’” 

Minecraft has been a hit any way you slice it, surging to become the biggest release of 2025 so far. Going a step further, Fast Company recently posited that Minecraft’s box office surprise overperformance signals a tidal shift for video game IP, which has a checkered past: “Video game adaptations are no longer synonymous with bad CGI and low returns. They’ve officially entered the IP big leagues.” There are at least 44 video game movies in various stages of Hollywood development at the moment, with more surely to come. “The video game market is so enormous that all you need is a small percentage of that audience to think your movie of a video game doesn't suck, and you're making money,” says TV producer Ilene Staple.

Newsletter continues below

SPONSORED BY FUTURE COMMERCE

If most business books feel like reheated LinkedIn posts, LORE is the rare exception.

Printed, bound, and built to last, LORE is the latest journal from Future Commerce—280+ pages of long-form essays, critiques, poetry, interviews, and photo essays that explore the stories, symbols, and systems shaping how we build brands and navigate the future of commerce.

This isn’t a how-to guide or a “10 steps to scale” blueprint. LORE unpacks the narrative forces behind the brands we love, the products we buy, and the culture we participate in. It challenges the reader to think like a worldbuilder, not just a marketer.

What role does myth play in product development? Why do some logos outlast languages? How can storytelling be used to build belonging in an algorithmic age?

Whether you’re a CMO, a strategist, a founder, or a future builder, LORE was made for you. It’s tactile, timeless, and deeply relevant for anyone shaping the next chapter of brand and retail.

This isn’t another PDF to skim. It’s a collectible. An artifact. And once you start reading, you won’t want to put it down.

Get your copy while it’s still in print. 

The success of chicken jockeys aside, the industry continues its ongoing contraction. Everything can and will be perceived as a recession indicator right now. Production numbers in Los Angeles are tanking after fallout from the writers’ strikes, the wildfires, and the rising cost of living: Earlier this week, LA City Council pushed through a measure streamlining the film permitting process in an attempt to boost production numbers. In the meantime, Hollywood will likely continue to veer more towards safe, proven IP. 

Besides video game IP, executives are bullish on finding things that can be adapted into “blue sky programming,” notes Staple. “People are looking for happier, more aspirational, feel-good material.” Staple adds that during difficult periods in history, audiences tend to gravitate towards the horror genre. The Twilight Zone became appointment viewing at a moment when people were keenly aware of their nearest nuclear fallout shelter. But the latest season of the unsettlingly prescient dystopian series Black Mirror, which dropped a few weeks ago, is drawing less viewers than its previous season did back in 2023. Economic contraction coinciding with worldwide chaos has become perhaps too much for audiences to stomach, especially when viewers are consuming movies and TV more than ever within the inner sanctum of their homes. Hence the want for breezier fare like Suits (which recently got an LA spinoff). 

A conservative administration could also be a factor. This pronounced political vibe shift has resulted in executives being less willing to pull the trigger on offerings that may draw attention to themselves. Meaning those holding the purse strings “are really on the lookout for many more conservative, traditional things,” Staple says. That may also explain why there’s such a fervor to find the next sweeping, small-town epic à la Virgin River and Yellowstone. Ransom Canyon, a soapy literary adaptation about various ranching dynasties in central Texas (including a character whose interests include literally making soap), has already become a hit for Netflix in the mere weeks since its release. 

A worldwide shift to the political right coincides with a notable uptick in faith-based programming. The King of Kings, based on a Charles Dickens work about the author recounting the story of Jesus to his son, has surpassed Parasite as the highest-ever grossing Korean film in the U.S. The Chosen, a Biblical TV show now in its fifth season that boasts no huge stars, has gambled on showing new episodes on the silver screen; its success, along with Amazon’s House of David, has Hollywood players scrambling to find their own take on ecclesiastical stories. 

Both The Chosen and King of Kings were distributed by the Utah-based Angel Studios, the company also behind the contentious hit Sound of Freedom that’s positioning itself as a religious A24. (Angel Studios’ financial success rate with films “puts the studio in the company of specialty distributors” like Neon and A24, according to The New York Times.) 

In times of crisis, people tend to turn towards organized religion. There’s no copyright issues when it comes to the Bible, arguably the most well-known IP of all time. “There's a huge, huge audience,” a former executive at a streamer says. “It's the perfect storm of content: It’s inexpensive, but it's stories and themes that people are really interested in.” 

Yet the next frontier for IP plus distribution, as Staple sees it, involves applying solid adaptations to the enormous market for vertical programming—entire shows and movies divided into minute-long increments, viewable on your phone. A similar venture via Quibi failed spectacularly a few years back, but revisiting that idea (albeit with some changes) seems inevitable seeing how the audience for this medium is growing. “Creator-based shows are becoming really popular, and everybody's obsessed with TikTok and how people are watching shows now on YouTube,” Staple says. “The idea of finding IP that fits into that seems like the most exciting, most fun thing to me at the moment.” 

Then again, there’s always next weekend. “There will be other boom times for intellectual property in the future, but it won't look like this, and it won't be the same kind of model,” adds novelist and former executive Matthew Specktor, who got his start finding adaptable books and plays for Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Productions in the mid-1990s, of this current moment of contraction. “There will be something else. Probably. Hopefully.” 🎬

PEAK IP