The Screen Industry Has More Ways to Win Than It Used To

The screen industry is changing fast.

That can sound like a threat, but I think it is also an opportunity, especially for the production companies, producers and regional screen businesses willing to let go of some old assumptions about where money comes from and what a “proper” screen model is supposed to look like.

For a long time, the industry has carried a fairly rigid hierarchy in its head. Broadcasters commissioned. Public bodies funded. Producers pieced together finance. Commercial work paid the bills somewhere off to the side. Brands sat in a separate bucket. And everyone quietly carried on pretending those worlds were still neatly divided.

They are not.

And that is not bad news.

The old model is not disappearing, but it is no longer enough on its own

There is still public funding. There is still commissioning. There are still broadcasters, tax incentives, regional support, equity routes and production partnerships. So this is not a story about the screen industry running out of money.

It is a story about the shape of the money changing.

The more useful question now is not where the one right source of finance is supposed to come from. It is how screen businesses build stronger mixes of revenue, partnership and capital that make good work more viable and more resilient over time.

That is where the conversation starts to get interesting.

Brands are no longer sitting on the edge of the industry

One of the clearest shifts is the role of brands.

Brands are no longer just there to buy ads or commission campaign assets. In many cases, they are now part of the wider screen economy, as funders, commissioners, partners, platforms and enablers of work that might not get made otherwise.

That does not mean every brand suddenly becomes a studio, and it definitely does not mean every screen business should bend itself around branded content by default. But it does mean the old-school view that brand-funded work is somehow secondary or less serious is getting harder to defend.

If a brand helps unlock strong storytelling, backs talent properly, gives a project oxygen and behaves like a genuine creative partner, then the more useful question is not whether it passes an old purity test. It is whether the work is good and whether the model holds.

That feels like a much more mature conversation.

The strongest businesses are getting more comfortable with diversification

For me, this is where the industry still needs to challenge some of its own reflexes.

There is still a tendency in some corners to treat revenue diversification as slightly suspect, as though a screen business becomes less credible if it works across multiple commercial models. 

But the companies adapting well now are often doing exactly that, not because they are less ambitious creatively, but because they are more realistic commercially.

That diversification can take a number of forms. For one business it might mean balancing traditional commissions with production services and brand partnerships. For another it might mean holding a mix of original development, retained content relationships and a more deliberate approach to IP. For others, it may involve live opportunities, talent development or investment-backed growth sitting alongside more familiar production income. Not every company needs the same model, but more screen businesses do need to think beyond one route in and one route out.

Because in this market, diversification is not dilution.

Very often, it is resilience.

Recent conversations in the industry make that shift feel very visible

In some of my recent work and conversations with production companies including Lightbox, My Accomplice and Not Just Any, that shift feels very real.

These are different businesses, with different models and different strengths, but all operating in a landscape where the lines between commercial production, creative development, partnership thinking and longer-form opportunity are much more blurred than they used to be.

That does not weaken the industry. If anything, it reflects a more modern and commercially intelligent version of it.

It suggests that the old binaries, commercial versus cultural, branded versus editorial, strategic versus creative, are becoming less useful than they once were. And probably should.

Cornwall has a real opportunity to lean into this

This feels especially relevant in Cornwall, where the screen sector is clearly developing but still has a real opportunity to think bigger and build more intelligently.

Screen Cornwall’s production investment initiative is a strong signal of that direction. It shows the region moving beyond a purely grant-shaped view of screen support and starting to think more seriously about investment, leverage and sustainable growth.

That is positive.

But I do not think the answer is simply more money in a different format.

The bigger opportunity is to build more screen businesses in Cornwall that can hold multiple routes to revenue and move between them confidently. Businesses that can work with brands, agencies, broadcasters, public-sector partners, cultural organisations and investors without feeling like they are moving between unrelated worlds.

Because they are not unrelated anymore.

This is why commercial thinking matters more than ever

This is the part the screen industry can still be slightly squeamish about.

Commercial thinking is too often treated as the dull bit that turns up after the idea. In reality, in a market like this, it is part of the strategic shape of the business itself.

It means getting much clearer on what is really being sold, where the value sits, what is repeatable, what remains project-based, what could become intellectual property, what belongs in a brand partnership and what does not, and what should be funded, financed or simply built to be profitable in its own right.

Those are not cynical questions.

They are the questions that help good screen businesses last.

And increasingly, the companies that will do best are not just the ones making strong work. They are the ones building stronger models around that work.

Final thought

The screen industry has more ways to win than it used to.

That is the good news.

There are still traditional routes, but there are also more hybrid models, more partnership possibilities, more commercial pathways and more room for businesses willing to think more broadly about how they make money without losing the quality of what they make.

That feels like a stronger future to build towards.

Not one where the industry gives up on public funding, traditional commissioning or creative ambition. But one where it gets more confident about diversification, more open about the role of brands and more commercially mature in how it thinks about growth.

That feels less like compromise.

And much more like progress.