Screen-industry strategy for the gap between story and sale.
I work across development, IP, rights, packaging, distribution logic, and market positioning for film, TV, streaming, and brand-funded entertainment.
The work sits where creative instinct meets commercial pressure.
A project may have a strong premise and still be hard to finance.
A format may have audience energy and still be difficult to sell.
A brand may want entertainment value and still think like an advertiser.
A producer may own the work and still miss the value chain around it.
That is the gap I work in.
- Role Writer-producer. Screen-industry strategist.
- Previously Founding partner and creative director at Stuart Entertainment. Eight years across international sales, development, rights packaging, co-production, and market strategy.
- Scale 3,000+ hours of content handled across scripted, unscripted, factual, formats, and brand-linked projects.
The screen business is no longer organised around one clean buyer path.
Streamers are changing their risk appetite.
Brands are behaving more like studios.
Creators are building audience proof before traditional buyers arrive.
Rights ownership is becoming more valuable and more complicated.
APAC markets are no longer just export territories. They are operating labs.
My work follows those shifts from the inside of projects, deals, platforms, and audience behaviour.
Practitioner intelligence on how the screen industry actually works.
Lab Thoughts is my public thinking platform. It is not a trade recap, review column, or general media newsletter.
It starts with a scene, deal, platform move, market behaviour, or production signal, then follows it to the business reality underneath.
APAC first. Global where it matters.
-
Essay · May 2026
YouTube can build an audience. It does not build the route to market.
Markiplier's Iron Lung exception shows why APAC operators should price creator audiences as discovery assets, not distribution control.
-
Essay · May 2026
Brand-funded documentary is a rights and editorial conversation, not a financing one
When brands enter documentary, the real negotiation is control, credibility, and downstream value
-
Essay · May 2026
The screen business is consolidating around inventory. APAC will resolve it first.
Two infrastructure launches in two weeks point to what the MPA 2026 numbers are really tracking. Connected TV inventory is becoming the unit of value across the screen economy.
A few working ideas from the archive.
-
Brand as studio
Why brands that want entertainment value need to think beyond sponsorship, content marketing, and borrowed attention.
-
The microdrama infrastructure shift
What happens when narrative design, production speed, distribution mechanics, and monetisation logic can be bought as a stack.
-
Australia's IP retention problem
Why creating valuable screen IP is not the same as retaining the long-term upside.
-
Animation's real shift is not aesthetic. It is infrastructural.
On YouTube, IP validation, and what changes for development when audience formation moves upstream of the commission.
-
YouTube paid out more than Netflix spent.
Two different theories about when money should move and who carries risk in the meantime.
Selective, upstream, strategic.
I work selectively with producers, development teams, founders, brand-content leads, and screen-industry operators on specific project problems.
This is not an agency model.
It is not outsourced execution.
It is not a standing retainer machine.
The work is upstream and strategic.
- A project has creative strength, but the buyer proposition is unclear.
- A slate has potential, but no clear packaging or rights logic.
- A brand wants to enter entertainment, but is still thinking in campaign terms.
- A producer needs to understand where the value sits before giving too much away.
- A pitch is polished, but not legible to the people who need to say yes.
The outcome is usually sharper positioning, clearer buyer logic, cleaner rights posture, and a better commercial read on the project.
If this sounds like the problem you are working through, email me with a brief note about the project and where it feels stuck.
adi.tiwary08@gmail.com