Hollywood's deal terms can strip creators of the intellectual property they bring to TV, film, micro dramas and theater projects — even as creator-led content gets pitched across the entire entertainment spectrum.

That tension dominated several panels at Advertising Week New York, where executives, creators and lawyers debated the central business question: are these partnerships helping creators build IP they control, or mainly giving studios, streamers and brands access to their audiences?

Digiday spoke with three agency and media executives, two creators and a creator economy lawyer about how these deals are financed and distributed, who owns the resulting IP, and what makes partnerships work for both brands and creators.

Are studios building brands or just renting audiences?

Akshay Mehta, CEO of the Whalar Group's creator-led Lighthouse Studios, has seen both eras of the Hollywood-creator relationship firsthand. He worked with Awesomeness Films almost a decade ago, when production companies and studios were first experimenting with the creator economy.

At that time, Mehta said, studios were solely focused on renting or buying creators' existing audiences for a movie, rather than building a long-term media brand with them.

That framing remains the core risk in today's dealmaking. When a studio's priority is audience access rather than brand-building, ownership of the resulting IP tends to sit with the studio — and the creator's leverage ends when the audience has been delivered.

What comes after the hit-makers?

The sources Digiday interviewed also sounded a caution about quality. They warn that Hollywood's rush to replicate hits like Obsession and Backrooms could produce a spate of poor-quality, under-developed creator-led projects in the next few years.

The pattern is familiar from other format gold rushes: a breakout success triggers a wave of imitators, compressed development timelines follow, and the market fills with projects that never needed to exist.

For marketers, the implication is direct. Brand dollars allocated to creator-led entertainment in the coming years will increasingly meet a supply of rushed, under-developed projects — making deal scrutiny, IP ownership terms and creator selection more consequential than the category's early, hit-driven phase.

The full reporting on deal financing, IP ownership structures and partnership mechanics is available on Digiday's site. The open question — whether creators can convert Hollywood's current appetite into equity in their own IP, rather than a one-time rental of their reach — will define who captures the value as the creator-led entertainment market matures.