Brands Are Becoming Studios: Why Marketers Are Doubling Down on Original Entertainment in 2026

Across 2024 and 2025, some of the world’s biggest brands made an increasingly clear statement: they’re not just advertising around entertainment anymore—they’re preparing to produce it. After years of declining ad effectiveness, rising subscription fatigue, and a fractured attention economy, marketers are turning to long-form storytelling as a new path to relevance.

What began as a handful of experiments has accelerated into a full-fledged movement. Luxury houses, QSR giants, beverage brands, retailers, and tech platforms are all exploring what was once unthinkable: building in-house studios capable of developing, financing, and distributing original entertainment on par with traditional Hollywood players.

A Runway of Studio Announcements Before 2026

LVMH: 22 Montaigne Entertainment

LVMH partnered with Superconnector Studios to launch 22 Montaigne Entertainment, an entertainment arm designed to produce prestige films and series rooted in luxury culture and craft.

Starbucks: Starbucks Studios

Starbucks announced its own studio initiative with Sugar23, focusing on community-driven, human-centered storytelling that extends the brand’s “third place” ethos into long-form content.

Chick-fil-A: Unscripted Originals

Chick-fil-A revealed plans for reality-style programming centered on hospitality, service, and everyday kindness—as narrative themes rather than overt product placement.

Saint Laurent Productions

French fashion house Saint Laurent’s production arm co-produced Emilia Pérez, which went on to win a Golden Globe—arguably the strongest proof of concept so far that a fashion brand can sit alongside traditional producers in awards-season conversations.

From Interruptions to IP: Why Brands Are Rethinking Storytelling

Three forces are driving the shift:

• Advertising attention has collapsed. Skipping, blocking, and scrolling past ads is now default behavior.
• Streamers need content. Brand-backed projects can ease the pressure of rising production costs and subscriber churn.
• Entertainment is becoming a loyalty engine. Original IP keeps people emotionally enrolled in a brand’s world—long after a campaign flight ends.

Instead of paying to interrupt someone else’s story, more marketers are asking what it would look like to build stories of their own that people actually choose to watch.

Co-Financing Models: A “Studio-Light” Path Into 2026

Not every marketer wants to spin up a full in-house studio. In late 2024, Sugar23 and production and distribution company Fifth Season launched a three-year venture to co-finance roughly $100 million in entertainment projects alongside advertisers.

That model gives brands a way to:

• Co-own IP without building an entire studio structure.
• Plug into existing development pipelines instead of starting from scratch.
• Align with projects that already have creative traction and marketplace interest.

As more of these funds and ventures come online, 2026 is likely to see brands show up deeper in the end credits—not just as “presenting sponsors,” but as equity partners and co-producers.

Brands Already Stress-Testing Entertainment

Beyond official studio announcements, several brands have spent the last few years testing what sustained entertainment play looks like:

• PepsiCo has backed multi-episode music and culture docuseries that live on both streaming platforms and brand channels.
• Nike continues to evolve its athlete content into lifestyle-driven narratives that feel closer to episodic series than traditional spots.
• Red Bull has effectively operated as a media company for years, with a slate of documentaries and event-driven features.
• Airbnb has explored host-focused travel storytelling built around lived experiences rather than product features.
• Patagonia has doubled down on environmental films that foreground cause over commerce, several of which have landed on major platforms.

These efforts are teaching brands what it takes to move from “content marketing” to genuine entertainment—and where the gaps still are.

Headwinds: The Part Nobody Sees in the Sizzle Reel

For all the momentum, industry veterans are quick to point out that brand-owned entertainment is not a shortcut:

• Timelines are long. Films and series can take years; that clashes with quarterly marketing calendars.
• Production and financing are complex. Many marketers underestimate packaging, rights, and distribution dynamics.
• Audiences can smell propaganda. If it watches like a long commercial, it will be treated like one.
• Success is harder to measure. The real value sits in cultural relevance, repeat viewership, and brand affinity—not just CPMs or last-click attribution.

Brand and entertainment teams are still learning how to work together: what control a brand should retain, where creative freedom has to live, and how to align expectations so projects don’t stall in development hell.

What’s Coming in 2026

Based on how 2024 and 2025 have unfolded, several patterns are likely to define 2026:

• More formal brand studio launches. Expect additional moves from luxury, CPG, financial services, fashion, wellness, and hospitality brands.
• Episodic first. Docuseries, unscripted formats, and short-form anthologies will remain the preferred entry point over fully scripted features.
• Values-led narrative universes. The most interesting brands won’t lead with product—they’ll lead with a worldview.
• Deeper streamer and FAST partnerships. Brand-funded originals will increasingly show up in environments that audiences already treat as “real TV.”
• New measurement norms. 2026 will push marketers to align on what success looks like for entertainment: cultural lift, IP value, and long-term loyalty rather than short-term performance metrics.

The question heading into 2026 isn’t whether brands will keep making entertainment. It’s which brands will make work that stands on its own—projects people would still watch even if the logo disappeared.

Those are the brands that will turn studios from a marketing experiment into a durable part of how they build equity in the years ahead.