YouTubers Dominate the Box Office & Tech Wants Robots to Do Your Chores

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0:29Toby Tatum:Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, why did Peter Thiel move to Argentina?

0:36Neal Freyman:Then, the two biggest movies in America right now were directed by YouTubers. It's Monday, June 1st. Let's ride.

0:48Toby Tatum:Good morning and welcome back to the week. Google's launching a new product. It has nothing to do with AI but still contains plenty of buzz. The company is seeking approval from the EPA to release 32 million specially treated mosquitoes in California and Florida to help reduce the spread of mosquito-borne disease like West Nile virus and Zika. It's a part of Google's DEBUG initiative, which was created over a decade ago to reduce populations of disease-carrying mosquitoes. The EPA will collect public comments through June 5th before deciding whether to grant an experimental use permit. Toby, imagine you're at a party and you tell someone you work at Google and they're like, oh, so YouTube, Gmail?

1:25Toby Tatum:and you're like, no, I'm on the team that's releasing 32 million mosquitoes.

1:29Neal Freyman:So how does this work? You release a bunch of toxic males into society and let them cause havoc. The males are infected with a naturally occurring bacteria that makes their offspring not viable. So eventually populations dwindle because all the babies die. Also, the other good thing, the 32 million males they plan on releasing, they don't bite. Only female mosquitoes bite humans, the more you know. So random, Neil. I love a good pun, though. And I want to imagine that some intern was like, oh, well, we debug software all day. What if we just started to debug the world? And now they've had this debug project in the works for over a decade now.

2:05Toby Tatum:So it's a real part of Google. So the males don't bite. So who are the toxic ones now? All right. All right. All right. Now a word from our sponsor, Sage. Toby, do you smell something? It's Sage. I burned a bunch because they're our sponsor today. No, the sponsor today is Sage, the company that builds AI-powered finance, payroll, and HR software for businesses of all size, not the ERP.

2:29Neal Freyman:Well, that makes a lot more sense, especially considering 6 million-plus businesses use Sage globally across 150 countries. They make it way easier than using a bunch of different softwares all at once by bringing everything together in a more connected system.

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2:55Neal Freyman:To learn more, head to sage.com slash morningbrew. That's sage.com slash morningbrew. Hollywood is getting taken over by YouTubers. Backrooms directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons led at the box office this weekend, bringing in$81 million. and it's the exact type of movie that you might be seeing more of soon. It had a small production budget of just$10 million, culturally fresh IP, and a built-in audience familiar with both its liminal space source material and the prior works of its prolific YouTuber-turned-director. Obsession is the other creator-led movie that is flipping the box office on its head.

3:34Neal Freyman:Curry Barker is a 26-year-old YouTuber who mostly made comedy before shifting over to horror in creating one of the most gravity-defying movies Hollywood has ever seen. It's already earned$74 million domestically on just a$750 ,000 budget, and its box office hauls are only growing. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it's the first film since E.T. in 1982 outside of the holidays to grow in both its second and third weekends after bringing in$26 million this past frame. Obsession and Backrooms fall on the heels of Iron Long, another indie horror movie from a YouTuber named Markiplier that brought in$50 million domestically on a self-funded$3 million budget.

4:15Neal Freyman:Hollywood has been stuck in a rut for the last two decades as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter ushered in an era of mega-budgeted IP milking, but the contrast of Disney's latest Star Wars movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu limping along falling 70 % from its first to second weekends, all while obsession and backrooms fill theaters and gain steam shows that the top-down legacy system is on shaky ground. Neil, this is a full-blown thing at this point. YouTube is Hollywood's farm system just serving up five-star prospects who crush it at the majors.

4:47Toby Tatum:This was a historic weekend at the box office. People will be talking about this one for many years to come. Here are a couple of other milestones that will reach. Cain Parsons is the youngest director by far to have the number one film at the box office. He is 20 years old. What were you doing at age 20? Probably watching movies, actually. The previous record, or watching YouTube, the previous record was held by a 27-year-old Josh Trank in 2012. The$81 million opening for Backrooms was bigger than The Devil's Wears Prada 2, which was inescapable, that marketing. It was bigger than the latest Pixar movie, and it's about on par with the opening of the latest Star Wars film, which is some of the most beloved IP that has ever been created.

5:27Toby Tatum:And then the final milestone is this is A24's biggest opening weekend ever. A24 is this insurgent movie studio that's kind of burst on the scene in Hollywood. Backrooms,$81 million. Number two, the previous record holder, was Civil War with$25.5 million opening. Marty's Supreme, which has one of the biggest movie stars anywhere in the world, Timothee Chalamet, opened to$17.5 million. Then the drama,$14.4 million. Wes and Dan, Robin Patterson. So this is a full-blown phenomenon.

5:56Neal Freyman:It is fascinating to me that people say that this is such a new era that Hollywood is moving into where it's so risky that they're betting on these young filmmakers. But it's actually the opposite in my eyes because these filmmakers are arriving essentially de-risked. Because what do you mean? Kane Parsons is 20 years old, but he's been making YouTube videos for the past decade, since he was 12 years old, really. He has an audience. He has proven that he can captivate an audience. Same thing with Curry Barker. He is an extremely successful social media creator. Now, you might argue that it's difficult to translate that success to the big screen, But Hollywood has stumbled upon a goldmine here.

6:34Neal Freyman:It's like, what if we took these people who have already proven they can do it on a smaller scale and just give them the reins to a larger scale movie? So maybe that's a fear-inducing concept to Hollywood. But I actually do just think this is the new era of filmmaking. Why don't you just piggyback on what YouTube audience are already telling you that they like? And we certainly are going to see more of this going forward because of just how smashingly successful these movies have been.

6:58Toby Tatum:The question was, will these Gen Z audiences who are watching these YouTubers on their laptop actually go to movie theaters and pay$13,$14,$15 a ticket to see it on the big screen? And the answer is absolutely yes. For backrooms, 85 % of the audience was under the age of 35. More than 50 % were 25 or younger. It appears that Gen Z loves to get out of the house, actually, because they've just been on their phone their whole life, and they want that escape. In 2025, according to Fandango, the members of Gen Z saw an average of seven movies in theaters compared to Gen X and Baby Boomers who saw around six movies on average.

7:34Toby Tatum:So these Gen Z people are coming out to the movies. And I have heard from people who did see Backrooms and Obsession that they talk a lot during the movies. Like, they're like, I love these movies were great, but no one has any attention span. And they were just chattering the whole time.

7:48Neal Freyman:I saw a take that was they're so used to watching streamers, you know, narrate their every thought. and then also having a chat to dump their thoughts into that when they go to an IRL movie, they think that you're allowed to just chat. What's going on? Chat this, chat that. That was one take. I also saw an interesting take online. This is from Allie. Her handle is at Miss Mayan on X. These new horror movies are hitting because young folks are scared of different things. Home invasions don't work because no one owns a home. Slasher movies are unrealistic when everyone has ring cameras and life 360.

8:21Neal Freyman:the liminal spaces and being forced to date a bad guy horrific which i do think is an underrated point here is that these are modern fears right now and so you're making modern horror movies that speak to those fears maybe it's not the biggest thing driving it but the source material certainly is why gen z is resonating with i just want to make sure we don't necessarily

8:40Toby Tatum:overstate what's happening it certainly was a historic milestone or historic weekend at the box office but if you look at the movies still coming out this summer there's plenty of big budget IP that's happening that people will probably go to. I mean, you have Toy Story 5, you have Supergirl, Minions and Monsters, which is the X number of movie in that franchise, a live action Moana remake, another Spider-Man coming up with Tom Holland. So maybe these two things can coexist. We thought for decades it was going to be, you know, the Spider-Man superhero takeover, but people are craving this new content from 20-year-old YouTubers.

9:13Neal Freyman:It's way more fun to overreact to it though too, Neil.

9:16Toby Tatum:You ever feel like picking up everything and starting over in a new country? Peter Thiel is in Argentina. According to reports, the influential tech billionaire has temporarily moved his family to Buenos Aires in a shift that's sure to spark discussion around wealth taxes and global financial flows. First, a bit of background on Thiel. He is one of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley. Thiel was a key member of the PayPal mafia alongside Elon Musk and was an early investor in SpaceX, OpenAI, and a bunch of other big time startups, A libertarian, he's a major donor to conservative political causes and candidates, and one of his favorite discussion topics is the Antichrist.

9:51Toby Tatum:So, why Argentina? It's not exactly a booming destination for disgruntled billionaires, given its longtime economic instability and skyrocketing inflation, but Thiel has found an ideological ally in President Javier Mille. Since being elected in 2023, Mille has followed through on his promise to take a chainsaw to government regulations. He's also an opponent of high taxes and considers himself and Teal fellow anarcho-capitalists. Teal's reportedly met with Milay and other Argentine economists since moving there. In addition to playing in a chess tournament, he finished in third, and watching the country's premier soccer rivalry, Boca Juniors, play River Plate.

10:26Toby Tatum:Toby, U.S. billionaires moving abroad, is this a trend that should be on our radar?

10:29Neal Freyman:Yeah. Last year, 142 ,000 millionaires globally migrated countries. That is projected to reach 165 ,000 millionaires this year. And the term for it is sovereign diversification, just like a rich person would diversify their wealth assets, you know, invest in different things, stocks, bonds, whatever. You want diversification. They are doing the same thing now with their homes and the jurisdictions that they operate in because they want to have fallback locations. If something, you know, politically goes awry in their home countries or, you know, a doomsday scenario. That is the other underrated aspect of Peter Thiel's motivation.

11:09Neal Freyman:here is that he does talk a lot about civilizational risk and nuclear risk. And so he wants to have multiple locations. He has a compound in New Zealand as well. He has a compound now in Argentina. He wants to just the ability to go different places if things go south at one location or another.

11:25Toby Tatum:Yeah, it does feel like not feel like this is reported that there is one of his main motivations for going to Argentina is this billionaire tax that could be on the ballot in November in California, which is that these billionaires, the assets of over$1 billion will be taxed at 5%. We've already seen a lot of migration out of California to places like Florida, but now Teal is also moving temporarily to Argentina. People who advise billionaires on where they should move to these, you know, the sovereign diversification always recommend that you go to somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, which I think is pretty funny because it's just not necessarily a target for nukes.

12:01Toby Tatum:So New Zealand is probably not going to get nukes. So that's why They rolled out this golden visa program, which a lot of wealthy people have flocked to. And Argentina wants to brand itself as one of those destinations as well. And the cabinet minister, Vermile, said, look, if higher taxes, more regulation abroad, why don't you come to Argentina? But it is a big pitch because just as recently as a couple of years ago, Argentina had inflation of over 200 percent. So we'll see whether Teal sparks more billionaire exodus to Argentina. But at the very least, their pitch is we're probably not going to get nuked.

12:33Neal Freyman:It's winner of the weekend time, the segment where we pick two stories that had a better weekend than French players in consequential final games. I won the pre-show game of who has a worse farmer stand. So I'm up first. And my winner of the weekend is New Zealand footballer, Tim Payne. If you have no idea who Tim Payne is that checks out, he's not someone you should know, unless you're a massive fan of the Kiwis. Payne is a 32 year old journeyman defender for the New Zealand men's national team. Who at the start of last week had fewer than 5 ,000 Instagram followers. But an Argentinian football influencer who goes by Scarzo decided to change Payne's entire online life.

13:10Neal Freyman:Scarzo's goal was to find the World Cup's least known player and make him famous. Payne fit the bill because despite being a national team player, his Instagram engagement looks like Neil's, basically non-existent. Until Scarzo told his 1.6 million combined followers to spam Payne's posts with likes, comments, follows, and edits to, quote, put Tim Payne on everyone's lips. and whoa did it work pain went from 4 715 followers to 1 million in roughly 48 hours and as of today he surpassed 3.8 million followers more than the nfl's new york giants pain played his part to perfection posting a video with an opening line in spanish thanking scarso directly leaning into the joke in a way that made the internet love him even more neil just a feel-good story that to me shows how insane soccer's global reach is because I didn't even know who Scarzo, let alone Tim Payne was, and yet he's powerful enough to make Payne bigger than the New York Giants.

14:07Toby Tatum:Soccer is so many of these stories. I mean, just maybe think of Wrexham. The Hollywood Robs were just like, let's buy the most random team you can think of with a passionate fan base and then turn them into a global brand through documentaries and other branding opportunities. And they absolutely did that with Wrexham. And same with Scarzo. He has done this before. He found a fifth division club from Lichtenstein who had 15 likes on a Christmas Instagram post and said, man, this club has the least amount of fans in the world. Let's boost their profile on the global stage. And then in a matter of days after he posted about them, they got 440 ,000 followers.

14:43Toby Tatum:Looks like he's just doing this with pain. This is his thing. And I love him for this is so fun. Go Tim Payne.

14:49Neal Freyman:It shows the two strongest forces on the internet to me. One is actually edits culture. We've talked a lot about clipping culture and how it can propel seemingly unknown people to feel like they're everywhere we talked about it a lot with clavicular but edits is one step above that where you have these very talented video editors you know creating these matches mashups and montages of tim pain leading into messy edits back to tim pain calling him the goat so that's one force yeah second force is soccer chants i mean soccer chants spread like wildfire when you nail the right one you still sing like one liverpool soccer chant from 2014 like oh money money that absolutely captures people's attention and we've seen the new zealand rugby team start to sing tim pain's soccer chant as well so it is how you create a cult hero in 48 hours make a catchy tune make enough edits and it just spreads like wildfire can you imagine if he scores that's what i was thinking so he is a defender but maybe he could

15:46Toby Tatum:get up there and score a header on a corner or something but that would be bedlam here's the

15:50Neal Freyman:thing. I looked at New Zealand's group. I don't know if Tim Payne's going to score, but if New Zealand win a couple games, their group is Iran, Egypt, and Belgium. So they have a chance of winning some games if they win or if Tim Payne scores, he's going north of 10 million followers for sure. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's win over the weekend right after this.

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16:16Neal Freyman:have I ever.

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