Inside a Creator’s Netflix-Style Film Set 🎥

Alan Chikin Chow looks to compete with Hollywood

Good morning. Was Odysseus really a sigma male? New AI-based study tools are gaining users by capitalizing on the “PDF to Brainrot” TikTok trend, where students share videos of generative voices reading their homework text over clips of mixing paint and Subway Surfers gameplay.

The jury is out on whether this method results in high test scores—though #studytok is certainly doing numbers on TikTok, with 347,000 posts over the last four months.  

Alan Chikin Chow Opens Hollywood Film Set

Alan Chikin Chow leads “Alan’s Universe,” his scripted series inspired by k-dramas and featuring high school happenings and supernatural powers / Alan Chikin Chow

Teen entertainment creator Alan Chikin Chow has built a following of over 65 million people in four years by making K-drama inspired skits and videos—including Alan’s Universe, a longform scripted series starring Chikin Chow and actor Chelsea Sik that has received over 39 billion views globally.

It was all filmed between two 800 square-foot apartments in Los Angeles…until now. 

Chikin Chow just opened a 10,000 square-foot film set just down the road from major Hollywood studios.

  • “[Creators] are rewriting how the entertainment industry works with this creator-led studio concept you see here,” YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said at the set opening yesterday. “They are turning upside-down the way the creative and business process works.”

  • Chikin Chow oversees a team of 20 and will use the set, with 10 custom-built rooms, to make Shorts and longform videos across social platforms for Alan’s Universe.

Chikin Chow’s new Burbank Studio sets include a room modeled after the apartment where he got his start / Photography by Hannah Doyle

He joins other creator brands like Mythical, The Try Guys, and Smosh who produce their YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram content out of large-scale studio spaces in Burbank. 

Big picture: Scripted series haven't always performed well on YouTube. But with a growing number of people watching YouTube on TVs, creators like Chikin Chow are proving that viewers are drawn into creator-led content that blends authenticity with scripted, high-quality production that you might see on Hulu or Netflix.

“Alan’s Universe is a symbol of people of all background identities coming together to make stories for the next generation to learn how to love and how to be a hero,” Chikin Chow said at yesterday’s opening.

Boy Room Partners with Amazon for New Season

Adam Faze’s (right) production studio Gymnasium partners with Amazon for its show “Boy Room,” which is hosted by comedian Rachel Coster (left) / Boy Room, Adam Faze

Boy Room, the short-form video show touring the messy bedrooms of American bachelors, just launched its second season with a new plot twist—room renovation—and a new sponsor—Amazon Prime.

  • “There was something that wasn’t satisfying enough with the original show [that included AI-generated] renovations,” Adam Faze, Boy Room creator and founder of production studio Gymnasium, told us. “Everyone wanted that full renovation moment. We saw those comments and started making a few phone calls.”

  • Amazon’s cross-channel marketing team, which works on branded content for Prime Video and recently started branching out to creators’ channels (like Recess Therapy’s Celebrity Substitute), answered the call.

“It really validates our feeling that this space is television,” Faze said. 

Amazon supplied the renovation and cleanup crews for the 16-episode season and contributed $5,000 to each bedroom makeover. Boy Room host Rachel Coster got to pick out all the wares.

“We’re in such [a] Wild West of short-form content that this idea of doing a branded season with a partner where they’re entirely incubated in the content itself is a first,” Faze said. “It makes us all the more excited to go make a bunch of new shows next year.”

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The Sidemen’s Reality Show ‘Inside’ Lands on Netflix

(Left to right) Tobi “TBJZL” Brown, Vikram “Vikkstar123" Barn, Joshua “Zerkaa” Bradley, Ethan “Behzinga” Payne, Simon “Miniminter” Minter, Olajide “KSI” Olatunji, and Harry “W2S” Lewis make up the Sidemen / Netflix

The second season of the Sidemen’s Big Brother-inspired reality show Inside will debut exclusively (and globally) on Netflix.

Zoom in: The Sidemen released the first, UK-based season of Inside on their YouTube channel in June.

  • It was an immediate hit—the full season collectively gained 38.1 million views in just seven days.

  • But the Sidemen told the BBC on Wednesday that they feel like they’d “hit the limit” of what they could achieve on YouTube, and moving to Netflix allows them to “reach a new audience” and launch a US-based spinoff.

Zoom out: The Sidemen have continued to level up in 2024. Netflix acquired and released a documentary from the creator group in the UK earlier this year, and the Sidemen’s 2025 charity soccer match sold out Wembley Stadium’s 90,000 seats within three hours this week.

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The content we’re looking forward to reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.

  • Read: The Atlantic explores what the evolution of Jake Paul means for young men as the internet matures into middle age.

  • Watch: Simone Giertz builds a pair of glasses with a sneaky-useful function for craftspeople.

  • Listen: It’s the last big Friday for new album releases in 2024. Whether it’s the first solo album from former Pixies singer Kim Deal or a potential swan song for the eccentric Father John Misty, All Songs Considered has you covered.