Gen Z’s fan edits are a staple of internet culture. Movie studios are finally buying in

Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie in "Heated Rivalry." The wildly popular and steamy show contributed to the longtime trend of fan edits. (Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max via CNN Newsource)

When Melanie Galeaz, also known as “Uhbucky” on social media, posted a fan edit of “Heated Rivalry,” she didn’t know it would lead to her dream job.

“I watched (the edit) so many times, it kind of like lost any spark to me,” Galeaz, 25, said, referring to her minute-long video condensing the six-episode, steamy hockey romance. The series streams on HBO Max in the United States.

The fan edit gained 4.6 million views on X and blew up on Instagram, TikTok and even Threads after it was posted on Dec. 28. This year, Melanie left the world of financial consulting to edit trailers and promos full-time at HBO, who she said reached out to her via DM saying they loved her edit.

(CNN and HBO share the same parent company, Warner Bros Discovery. HBO did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.)

As eyes turn from big screens to vertical video and seemingly everyone has a streaming platform now, movie studios are buying into the fan-edit frenzy to reel in a new generation of franchise enthusiasts. Movie studios are shifting their marketing priorities to reach the lucrative Gen Z and millennial groups – and hiring young, digital-native editors to make fan edits. Lionsgate, HBO and Netflix have all promoted fan edits in the last couple of years.

The short fan-made videos, a longtime part of internet culture, string together clips from movies, TV shows or other sources, often using eye-catching transitions and evocative music. Gen Z overwhelmingly identifies as belonging to fandoms, and the most popular fan edits can draw hundreds of millions of views on social media.

Lionsgate has been working with fan editors for years but brought more attention to it recently, working with a team of at least 10 to 15 fan editors at a time as contractors. The movie studio saw two of its franchises, “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games,” gain a second life in part because of its self-aware, tongue-in-cheek edits.

“We want to create content that is very native, that is fan-first, and the best people to do that are the fans,” Briana McElroy, Lionsgate Motion Picture Group’s head of worldwide digital marketing, told CNN.

A new dawn for Twilight (and others)

While trailers promote upcoming movies on the big screen, fan edits are usually made for vertical video and can focus on anything from just-out shows to movies from years ago. Lionsgate told CNN that when it pushed its own “Twilight” edits on social media, alongside viral fan-made edits, there was a direct correlation with increases in views for the movie on streaming sites.

Hiring fan editors could signal an industry-wide shift in how studios market their movies, Shawn Robbins, founder and owner of industry analysis group Box Office Theory, said.

Viral edits can attract new fans and bring Gen Z from TikTok to theaters and streaming sites, Robbins told CNN. A survey from advertising agency Ogilvy found that 86 per cent of Gen Z respondents called themselves fans in a report last December — and half of them reported that their fandoms help them make sense of the world.

Fan engagement, such as viral edits, “keeps these brands going for years and years,” Robbins said.

Take “The Hunger Games” series. Viral edits, — such as thirst traps of Josh Hutcherson’s character, Peeta Mellark — garner hundreds of thousands to millions of views on social media over a decade after the first film’s release. The series’ resurgence lined up with the release of a prequel movie, “The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” in 2023.

For the upcoming “Hunger Games” prequel, “Sunrise on the Reaping,” Lionsgate sought to combine the appeal of traditional movie trailers and fan edits. “When we released the trailer, we immediately had edits teed up… we knew that the fans themselves were going to also be creating content and edits, and we wanted to be a part of that conversation,” McElroy said.

Fan edits go corporate

Individual content creators are usually the ones making fan edits for close-knit fandoms. When Lionsgate began posting its own fan edits, one comment under a Twilight video expressed disbelief: “oh wow! A hunger games edi- WAIT LIONSGATE??!!.”

“When media corporations come in and try and co-opt fan engagement, in a lot of fan communities that can be seen pretty negatively,” Paul Booth, a communications professor at DePaul University, told CNN.

There’s also the issue of copyright and controlling the image of a movie or series. Although studios don’t want their content distributed for free, it’s hard not to recognize the publicity from fan edits.

“It’s much harder to control something after it’s released in theaters, and once it’s available for streaming at home,” Lionsgate’s McElroy said.

Galeaz said she’ll keep making edits for fun, but she won’t engage with shows she’s currently working on for HBO. She said she has always wanted to do fan edit-type work but had no idea her current job even existed five years ago.

“This happening was absolutely mind-blowing,” Galeaz said.

By Ramishah Maruf, CNN