The Broad Collapse and the Niche Rise

Legacy entertainment companies keep trying to make things for everyone. The projects that work are built for someone specific.

After many years in rooms breaking stories for network TV, streaming platforms, and game franchises, I can’t argue. Almost everything that face-planted recently tried to satisfy a vague, theoretical audience that doesn’t exist. Almost everything that broke out came from creators who knew exactly what they wanted to say and who they were talking to.

Scripts By Committee Collapse Under Their Own Weight

I’ve been in rooms where the network wants four quadrants, the studio wants international appeal, the star wants gravitas, and the algorithm wants something “fresh but familiar.“ By the time everyone gets their notes addressed, the script becomes a Frankenstein’s monster of competing agendas.

The Marvels felt like it had been pulled apart and reassembled too many times. The Flash wanted to be five different movies at once. Black Adam could’ve been a sharp villain study but got stretched thin building a universe. Secret Invasion forgot what genre it was supposed to be. Obi-Wan Kenobi got torn between character study, kid-friendly adventure, and franchise obligation.

When your script tries to satisfy every quadrant, characters lose their edges, the tone gets mushy, and the story becomes a checklist of beats that exist because someone got nervous about making a decision.

Focused Vision Beats Broad Appeal Every Time

The strongest work of the last few years came from creators who planted their flag and never budged.

The Bear lives in a pressure-cooker kitchen and never leaves. That commitment to one lane turned a hyperlocal story into a worldwide phenomenon. (Until it didn’t.) Severance is slow, eerie, existential with zero interest in pleasing the masses. Andor is a political thriller grounded in real history with no lightsaber nostalgia. Tony Gilroy is a man with taste, vision, and conviction.

RRR is maximalist melodrama dialed all the way up. That specificity made it global. Poor Things is bold, weird, visually fearless. Same with Barbarian, Talk to Me, and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Each built from a personal creative pulse.

When I was working on Heroes, we expanded the mythology across platforms, but the core show still had to stand on its own. These newer shows understand that instinct. Focused identity turns a niche into a tribe. A tribe talks. Word spreads. You win.

Memorable Characters Have Iconic Silhouettes

We’re living in a swipe-driven culture. Visual identity, tonal clarity, and emotional posture matter from frame one.

Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams broke TikTok because the character was a pure signal. The look, the posture, the deadpan stiffness. You could sketch her on a napkin and nail it. Carmy from The Bear? White tee, apron, tattoos, thousand-yard stare. One shot tells you everything. Lady Jessica in Dune Part Two became instant iconography. Furiosa is all grime, metal, and coiled rage. Nimona is a punk riot of color and attitude.

Breaking characters for Hannibal with Bryan Fuller, we’d spend hours finding a visual language for characters. Beyond wardrobe, to posture, rhythm, how they inhabited space. Specificity sticks.

Characters are memorable when you can feel them before they talk.

Your Opening Must Plant a Flag Right Away

Modern scripts don’t have ten minutes to warm up. You’ve got about one page to declare your intentions.

Fallout hits you with retro charm, black humor, and nuclear violence in the first few minutes. The Last of Us uses that cold open interview to lay out the intellectual spine, then the daughter’s chase sequence to establish the emotional spine. A Murder at the End of the World announces mood and thematic focus without wasting a second.

Back when J.J. and I were working on Alias, we knew the teaser had to grab you by the throat. That principle is even more critical now. Modern audiences browse stories the way they browse apps. Hook ‘em or you’ll get swiped.

Simple Pitches Are the Ones That Sell

The last few years of successful pitches share one trait: you must be able to repeat them without stumbling. Elevator pitches when you’re only traveling one floor.

The Night Agent has a single-sentence identity. Low-level spy answers a phone that almost never rings. Saltburn is a class thriller with twisted desire and a specific aesthetic. Shogun is prestige period political epic. Reacher is a giant man solves problems with his fists and his brain. The Gentlemen is Guy Ritchie does organized crime in the English countryside.

I’ve been in hundreds of pitch meetings. For ones that work the exec can pitch what I pitched to their boss on a walk down the hallway. If they can’t remember, or explain it, you’re toast.

Studios are buying fewer pitches but are hungrier for loud identity. Broad dramas struggle to get meetings while focused concepts with clear lanes get attention. The market shifted from “what can appeal to everyone“ to “what can own a specific audience.“

Careers Get Built on Repeatable Voice

Modern careers aren’t built on range. They’re built on identity.

Mike Flanagan makes horror with a gentle ache and a theological heartbeat. You can spot his fingerprints from across the room. Emma Seligman (Shiva Baby, Bottoms) makes films that feel queer, chaotic, irreverent. Nobody else’s work feels like hers.

Here’s something else that’s changed since I started: YouTube essayists and micro-critics have become modern tastemakers. Creators like Folding Ideas, Jenny Nicholson, Thomas Flight, FilmJoy, and RedLetterMedia have audiences that treat their word as gospel. When these pundits elevate something, it finds a second life. When they tear something apart, the industry feels it.

These voices favor a strong and authentic creative identity. Their communities generate amplification studio marketing can’t pay for.

You Can’t Play the Old Game

Four-quadrant strategy is toast. The market’s more fractured than ever, and viewers are trained to smell creative compromise.

The winners are the storytellers who know what they love, commit to it hard, and build worlds that reward confidence. When I did transmedia work on Heroes, and Lost, the pieces that landed were the ones where we stayed true to our show’s specific tone and vision, not the ones where we tried to please everybody.

Scribbler’s Toolbox Takeaways

Pick Your Lane: Find the one thing your story does that no one else in the marketplace is doing. That’s your compass. Follow it.

Character in Silhouette: Describe your protagonist in three visual cues and one emotional stance. If you can’t, keep chiseling.

The One-Page Identity Test: Your opening page should announce tone, genre, and intention. If it hedges and flip-flops, that’s where the rewrite starts.

Pitch With a Single Breath: If a twelve-year-old can’t understand what you’re saying in one clean sentence, your idea needs simplification.

Own Your Strange: The market rewards conviction, not compromise. Lead with your specific voice and let the audience form around you.

The broad middle has collapsed. Pick a tribe, speak to them clearly, and scribble like your career depends on it.

Because it does.