The power balance between creators and Hollywood has flipped, Oren Rosenbaum, partner and co-head of UTA Creators, said at AI Creator Day.
Studios used to ask creators to make something new for their platforms. Now they want the shows creators already make, and creators call the shots.
Speaking with TheWrap senior reporter Kayla Cobb, Rosenbaum recalled early advice UTA, one of Hollywood’s major talent agencies, gave Jimmy Donaldson, the YouTuber known as MrBeast. “We were the first people in there to say to Jimmy, like, ‘If you don’t star in your video, there isn’t a video.’ That’s a really tough thing to scale a business with,” he said.
Self-financing works for some clients, but he prefers another route. “We make other people spend the money to allow for the creative freedom that the creator wants to ultimately have,” Rosenbaum said.
AI is still a sensitive point in deals. “We have clients who, again, like, are turning down millions and millions and tens of millions of dollars because they don’t want to be associated with AI,” he said.
He was candid about the agency’s own learning curve. “We f—ed up so much s— early on. I’m serious. And we learned from it,” Rosenbaum said.
TheWrap and What’s Trending presented AI Creator Day 2026 at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles on Sept. 29, the day before TheGrill. Sponsors included Artlist, Cantina, CapCut, Fairground Entertainment, Native Foreign, pocket.watch, Rebel Audio, UTA and Wispr Flow, the official voice partner, whose Notetaker captured the quotes in this story.
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