What you’re missing: The Reset is a newsletter we send out every Sunday to the corporate enterprise subscribers to WrapPRO. If you think your company or organization would be interested in signing up for an enterprise plan, please reach out to our head of enterprise sales, Kimberly Donnan, at [email protected].
Happy Sunday WrapPRO enterprisers,
We are about to close out 2025 and you can describe the past 12 months in many ways: the Year of Sports as a Lifeline; the Year of a Warmer AI Embrace, the Year Big M&A Roared Back. Or the Year Creators Seeped Further Into the Mainstream. Let’s stay with that one.
Our creator economy reporter, Kayla Cobb, who launched our weekly newsletter Creatorverse in July, writes about that in her 2025 wrap-up for the creator economy on Monday, it is chock full of rich details about the sector’s evolution.
Highlights: compared to 2024, payments to creators increased by 79%. That figure includes the $100 billion YouTube has paid to creators and media companies over the past four years as well as the $1 billion Roblox paid to creators in 2025 alone, Kayla writes.
Her story is a must-read for any media and entertainment professional so I won’t go too deep in the details here, but I do think the topics she hits on tell the story and should make you want to put this analysis on your year-end, to-do list as you strategize for 2026.
Video podcasts took off Live streaming saw a big boom Creators greatly increased their empires AI took over content creation Short-form proved it’s here to stay The creator economy saw more M&A than ever before Netflix, Tubi and FAST channels partnered with creators Creators moved into theaters Stricter age verification measures disrupted platforms
The sector still has its challenges, and Kayla covers those, but we do believe the media and entertainment stalwarts will continue to bend their models increasingly around creators.
Have a happy holiday. Thank you for being a reader of The Reset and please consider signing up for Creatorverse if you’re not already reading every Thursday.
Tom Lowry Senior Vice President/Editorial Strategy [email protected]
1. Sneak Peek 
at our 2026 Trends Research Report WrapPRO has partnered with the National Research Group (NRG)to present “2026 in the Frame: 6 Key Media and Entertainment Trends,” our playbook for you for the year ahead.
The report will publish on Monday and unpack critical trends that will define the year ahead, from the rise of content creators as Hollywood power players to the deepening integration of AI into the industry’s creative workflows. Taken together, these trends offer a snapshot of a fast changing media ecosystem, and the opportunities it presents for studios, exhibitors, and audiences alike.
Please keep an eye out for it. Here’s one of that charts with survey results that will highlight on our trend on AI.
2. Microsoft’s AI Investing Hockey Stick Thank you to Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi for sharing this chartthis past week, showing the extraordinary growth of investment by Microsoft in AI.
The suggestion is that AI could push MSFT to be a $5 trillion market cap stock in 2026.
AI “could put the 50-year-old tech icon, known for its Windows operating system, Azure cloud services, and, more recently, Copilot chatbot, in a prime position to add trillions to its market cap over the next decade, Sozzi wrote on LinkedIn, highlighting that OpenAI was Yahoo Finance’s 2025 company of the year.
Let’s face it, being an executive in the entertainment business is really about how tightly you can hang on to the rollercoaster. Nobody has had quite the ride this past year like Pamela Abdy, co-chair and CEO of the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group.
Along with her co-chair Mike De Luca, Abdy looked like she was going to be pushed out of her job back in the spring after the big-budget “Joker: Folie à Deux” flopped and the pipeline prospects were not looking promising.
But what a comeback, a feat that landed Abdy onTheWrap’s “Changemakers | 2025: 51 Women Who Made a Difference” list.
As our Editor-in-Chief Sharon Waxman noted: “As the year unfurled, Abdy and De Luca saw win after win at the box office, starting with “A Minecraft Movie,” then the “Superman” reboot, Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and the surprise horror hit “Weapons” from Zach Cregger. The studio’s fall slate is led by Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” a front-runner in awards season.
“Overall, Warner Bros. set a record for seven consecutive films opening at more than $40 million in North America, even as the overall box office had an historically terrible year. As parent company Warner Bros. Discovery entertains buyers, Abdy and De Luca’s contracts have been renewed.“
An aspiring dancer who had to put that dream aside after breaking her foot, the Emerson College grad began her career as an assistant to Danny DeVito at Jersey Films, rose to president, moved over to MGM as president of production, and eventually joined Warner Bros. with longtime partner De Luca.
The spotlight on Abdy grew even brighter in the home stretch of the year as her parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, began actively selling itself with much of the interest, particularly from bidder Netflix, on the businesses that Abdy oversees.
Abdy told Waxman “you make the movies the greatest they can be. Not all are gonna work. We all get that. Some will pay off, some won’t. But all you can do is trust your gut. And keep your head down.”
To which our editor-in-chief offered this kicker: “Big props to Abdy for leading through the chaos, ignoring the haters and sticking to her instinct to bet on creativity.”
How This Chameleon UK Location Became a Little-Known Hollywood Backdrop, Bloomberg News
The End of the Hollywood Model, People vs. Algorithms podcast
Warner Bros. Studio Real Estate Could Reshape Global Production as Buyers Fight for Control, Stagerunner
WrapPRO
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