Glitch just wrapped a Youtube series by putting their final episode onto big screens in multiple countries. There's been a lot of media noise about the difficulty of getting films into theaters, and a lot of blaming Glitch, but there's not been any understanding about what Glitch actually did differently that is scaring Hollywood. I think it's that, just like with the Youtubers producing Backrooms and Iron Lung and FNAF, the thing Hollywood misses is the audience demographic. Glitch and other Youtubers are targeting an emerging young-adult audience which wants edgy, gritty, emotionally sincere content that fills the gap between PG-13 and R ratings. To older folks, e.g. Murder Drones is facile cringe, while to tweens (young teens, PG-13 sensibilities) it's too intense and scary. But it's a happy medium for catcher-in-the-rye emo young adults, which is why every second t-shirt sold at Hot Topic has a murder drone on it.

By literally no coincidence, Glitch's next greenlight is a grimdark gritty deconstruction which critiques the dystopia of Disney parks, illustrated by their brand-new 2D animation department, designed by a former Disney showrunner who left because Disney wouldn't let them tell stories aimed at young adults. (Dana Terrace, not Alex Hirsch.) Disney's not the only game in town; Turner previously ran shows by Owen Dennis and Rebecca Sugar while putting pressure on them. Lotta animators with big dreams who have been told "no" by big producers; in particular Lauren Faust supposedly has been waiting for decades for somebody to give her an animation team without creative limits, like Glitch just gave Terrace. (Faust worked on The Iron Giant and animated the character of Sawyer in Cats Don't Dance; the sheer poetry of her career could be enough to transform the industry (again).)