Dhar Mann, the viral creator behind a stream of melodramatic, moral-lesson-laden videos, has announced plans for a four-acre Los Angeles production hub called Creator City, aiming to open by Super Bowl weekend in February 2027. The announcement lands at an unusual moment for Hollywood real estate, with soundstages across the region sitting underused even as Mann bets on expansion.
Mann unveiled the project during his Advertising Week New York keynote, according to Tubefilter. Deadline described Creator City as a four-acre campus with multiple sound stages, roughly 175 sets, and capacity for about 15 productions running at once. But the exact number of soundstages remains disputed. Tubefilter reported the campus will offer five soundstages along with resources for videos, podcasts, live events and collaborative creator projects, while Variety reported that Mann purchased a four-acre campus with nine sound stages. Neither figure has been reconciled in available reporting.
Dhar Mann Studios has framed the project as Mann's vision for a physical home for the creator economy, one meant to bring together online personalities, traditional studios, advertisers and technology companies under one roof for content production, partnerships and business building. The company believes Creator City would unite those groups in a way the industry currently lacks, though the campus's eventual operating model, creator-access rules and facility-use costs have not been detailed.
A $100 Million Target Built on Pledges, Not Contracts
Mann has also set a goal of brokering $100 million in creator-brand sponsorship deals, and he told attendees he has already reached that figure. Per the same Tubefilter account, that total rests on pledges from chief marketing officers whom Mann declined to name, and none of those pledges have been signed as official deals. The gap between a stated target and an unconfirmed tally is itself part of the story, since the campus's financing and construction status have not been independently verified elsewhere.
Mann also addressed his company's shifting revenue base. He said less than 40% of Dhar Mann Studios' income now comes from YouTube and Facebook, down from 95% roughly two and a half years earlier, and he expects that share to fall further, to around 30%, next year, according to Variety. The outlet also reported that Dhar Mann Studios produces five half-hour scripted shows per week and that the company can move from script to screen in about seven days for an hour of digital content, with its longest episodes taking roughly 21 days.
Burbank Operation Expanding to Chatsworth
Mann's existing Burbank facility spans approximately 125,000 square feet with three soundstages and employs about 220 people, according to the Los Angeles Times. The same report said Dhar Mann's company purchased a 108,000-square-foot production property in Chatsworth for $23 million in September 2026, with plans to relocate there by 2027 — a separate expansion from the newly announced Creator City campus. The Times also noted that Mann is far from alone in outgrowing his space: Smosh Productions moved into a 32,000-square-foot Burbank facility to meet its programming needs, and creator Alan Chikin Chow moved his 13-person operation into a 10,000-square-foot Burbank building in 2024 after outgrowing his Koreatown apartment.
Mann has been vocal about his belief that influencers represent the future of Hollywood, a view he has carried to multiple industry stages this year, including Cannes Lions in France in June and Tribeca X in New York earlier that same month, as well as his Advertising Week New York appearance. His production company's output — videos built around moral lessons — has become one of the more recognizable brands in the online video space.
Traditional Hollywood's Soundstages Sit Underused
The timing underscores why Creator City has drawn attention: Los Angeles's traditional production infrastructure has been struggling. Soundstage occupancy across the region averaged just 62% in the first half of 2025, down from 63% the prior year and far below the 96% peak recorded in 2016, according to Deadline. The region logged only 19,694 film and television shoot days in 2025, the lowest level outside the pandemic year of 2020, as reported by the Hollywood Reporter.
On-location filming in Los Angeles fell 16.1% in 2025, continuing declines of 14% in 2024 and 20% in 2023, Deadline's soundstage report found. Commercial Observer reported that television production in the region fell nearly 30% in the first three months of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier. Scripted TV shoot days on FilmLA participant stages had already plunged 23% between 2023 and 2024, even as the overall number of projects shot on those stages ticked up 5%, from 1,225 to 1,287, per Deadline's analysis.
New Stages Keep Opening Anyway
Despite the slump, new soundstage capacity keeps coming online. FilmLA reported that Los Angeles County held 8.3 million square feet of total stage space as of March 2026, still the world's largest inventory, with two new facilities opening that quarter — five stages at East End Studios and six at Cinespace Studios — and seven more builds or renovations in the pipeline. Variety separately reported that East End Studios opened its five-stage Mission Campus in Boyle Heights in January and that Cinespace's six-stage Woodland Hills facility opened in March.
Other production hubs are also expanding their studio-space inventories. FilmLA noted that both regions have doubled their studio-space inventories over the past five years — a pace that stands in contrast to Los Angeles's current occupancy struggles, even as Mann prepares to add his own stages to the mix.
