Good morning. The creator-to-horror-director pipeline continues, with Curry Barker’s Obsession grossing $16M domestically in its opening weekend. 

With a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s now the highest-rated creator horror film. Kane Parsons, your move.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Four years ago, 50 or so creators used to go to the Cannes Lions. Now? It’s 10x that. We asked Cannes Lions VP and Chief Growth Officer Ed Davidson what’s behind the rise of creators at the world’s largest advertising festival.

"A lot of the shift is reflective of the creators—they've become such a central part of the ecosystems in Cannes: advertising, marketing, media, entertainment, and retail," Davidson said. 

That’s why Cannes’s creator program, LIONS Creators, is now offering expanded programming and awards centered around a creator industry expected to reach $480 billion next year, according to Goldman Sachs.

Put it simply: Creators are flocking to Cannes because advertisers are flocking to creators. This year's attendees include CMOs and execs from Fortune 500 companies like P&G, Patagonia, New Balance, and Unilever—the latter of which allocates half of its marketing budget to creators.

"Creators are increasingly in the advertising business. More money is flowing there than ever, and [Cannes is] a place where you can position yourself as a strategic marketing partner to brands," our own Samir Chaudry told us. 

That’s impacting how creators are showing up. Davidson said creators are increasingly participating in the major event not just as people who make videos or build audiences, but as founders and agency heads with full commercial agendas. 

As for the next five years at Cannes? "I only see creators' influence growing. What will be interesting is the definitions we use—on a five-year horizon, are we talking about something completely different or fully integrated? We may just be talking about business leaders as opposed to creators,” Davidson said.

Is 2026 the year of platforms’ legal reckoning? Snap, YouTube, and TikTok just settled a social media addiction lawsuit in a Kentucky school district.

The details:

With over 1,200 similar lawsuits in school districts across the US, Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that the “collective theoretical liability” of all the suits is close to $400B.

Big picture: These lawsuits follow a landmark personal injury case against platforms in March—in which YouTube and Meta were found liable for the mental health decline of a young woman. 

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Hi everyone, it’s Syd. Last Friday, I walked a respectable 0.4 miles to Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood for comedy creator Zay Dante’s album release party. 

How he got here: Dante has spent the last six years making short-form pop culture commentary videos on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram for an audience of 2.7M.   

His previous EP, TBTV, was a compilation of comedy rap songs—but his new album, Taste, drops the comedy, a shift that is new to both Dante and his audience. 

So how do you convince your audience to start taking you seriously?

Dante’s answer is…you don’t. He plans to keep his normal comedy content coming for the long-time fans, incorporating in music as he promotes the album.

“I'm lucky enough to have this built-in community that is excited for the stuff that I'm doing,” Dante told us. “If you come to me for my regular stuff, that's great. I still got that, but if you're interested in the music, I got the music too.”

Behind the scenes: Dante spent around $10K of his own money to finance the album, collaborating with other creators like Demko for track production and Cassius Pettit for music video direction. His next challenge? Adapting to the new audience brought in from the music content.

“I know what does well on my side of the internet, but music is a completely new endeavor for me,” Dante said. “So I can try to emulate the good rollouts that I see from other people, take what I can from that, and do my own version.”