Evan Shapiro: Fandom Drove 2026’s Best Film Returns
Media analyst Evan Shapiro told film buyers and sellers that the strongest returns this year went to films backed by devoted fan communities, according to Net Influencer. He spoke on November 10 at the American Film Market’s inaugural New Global Screen Economy Summit.
Small budgets, huge returns
In a keynote titled “The Whole Movie,” Shapiro showed a chart of theatrical returns built from company earnings and Sports Business Journal data. He put “The Mandalorian and Grogu” at a negative 39% return on a $165 million budget. Curry Barker’s “Obsession,” made for $750,000, returned 69,711%, and Kane Parsons’ “Backrooms” returned 3,925%, according to Shapiro. Those two films finished first and second at the domestic box office ahead of the Star Wars release earlier this year.
His lead example was Glitch Productions, the Australian studio behind “The Amazing Digital Circus.” Glitch released the series’ final two episodes as a two-week feature and returned 160%, Shapiro said. Box office was 20% of the project’s business plan and merchandise 60%. He said the theatrical run was meant to spark the fandom and gave Glitch more leverage with Netflix and more merchandise sales.
Shares over size
Shapiro argued that engagement matters more than audience size. Barker has 1.7 million YouTube subscribers, 750,000 Instagram followers and 1.4 million TikTok followers, he said, far fewer than MrBeast. He urged studios to track shares above other metrics.
He cited TikTok fan editor Areq, whose “Creed” edit drew 239 million views and lifted viewing of the film on Amazon by 29%, according to Shapiro. Net Influencer noted that Variety reported in October 2025 that Lionsgate had begun hiring TikTok fan editors, and that the studio released an official fan-edit trailer by Areq for “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping” at New York Comic Con in October.
“Nano creators with massive engagement are going to drive substantially more business for you than doing one deal with MrBeast,” Shapiro said. His data also showed studio accounts trailing platform averages for engagement on YouTube and TikTok.
Fans who skip theaters
Citing Luminate data, Shapiro said about half of Americans call themselves avid movie fans, while about a third go to the movies. He said fans who do not attend theaters are at least as important as those who do.
Theatrical produced 59% of film revenue over the past three years, he said, while profit sits in later windows. In his three-year, all-windows analysis, A24 ranked first at 67.8%, ahead of Sony at 60%, while 114 titles from smaller independent distributors returned negative 44.4%.
Shapiro proposed treating social video as a post-theatrical window for merchandise, subscriptions, Patreon memberships and fan financing. He estimated that putting 3,200 films on YouTube would earn about $500 million a year. He also said the ESHAP Cross-Screen Attention Index ranks TikTok first among Americans aged 13 to 34, and predicted 2027 will be “the year of TikTok.”
Shapiro published the full deck in a November 9 newsletter post and moderated a panel on fan equity with Republic Film and creator-director Wesley Wang. “If you know how to build affinity, if you know how to build community, you will find the economics,” he said.
Source: netinfluencer.com
Image: netinfluencer.com
