$100M creator campus promised for LA — as Hollywood flounders and sound stages stand empty

Hollywood is struggling to keep the lights on — but one YouTube megastar apparently thinks what Los Angeles really needs is more soundstages.

Brash internet personality Dhar Mann rolled into Manhattan for Advertising Week New York, using bully pulpit as the Chief Creator Officer to drop an announcement: a sprawling, four-acre Los Angeles production hub dubbed “Creator City,” framed alongside a dizzying pledge to generate $100 million in creator brand deals.

Mann pitched it as a glossy playground where digital influencers, tech giants and big company ad dollars can convene under one roof to pump out vertical-video gold.

Reportedly slated to open Super Bowl weekend in February 2027, the compound is being billed by Mann as the physical promised land complete with five soundstages for the modern creator economy.

But while Mann is talking a big game about the future of entertainment, the announcement comes at an awkward time for the city he hopes to conquer.

Los Angeles has no shortage of underused production facilities, with once-bustling Hollywood soundstages sitting empty as traditional film and television production continues to decline or relocate.

Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters

Yet Mann believes the future belongs to a very different kind of Hollywood player: the influencer. Dhar Mann Studios believes Creator City would unite online personalities, traditional studios, advertisers and tech companies under one roof to produce content, forge partnerships and build businesses.

It’s unclear how the new campus would operate, which creators would have access, or what it would cost to use the facilities.

“The creator economy was built on technology and platforms, but unlike the industries around it, it has never had a physical home of its own, the way technology has Silicon Valley, finance has Wall Street and entertainment has Hollywood,” Dhar Mann Studios said in a press release reported by Tubefilter. “Creator City is Dhar’s vision for that home.”

A YouTube mogul, Mann has built a substantial production business churning out melodramatic PG videos with heavy-handed moral lessons.

His existing Burbank operation spans approximately 125,000 square feet, employs about 220 people and has three soundstages, according to the LA Times.

In September, his company reportedly purchased a 108,000-square-feet production property in Chatsworth for $23 million, and plans to relocate there by 2027.

While there’s no obvious shortage of places to point a camera in the City of Angels, it appears Mann is betting on the next generation of entertainment moguls wanting more than an empty stage, but also a place to network.