For a glimpse of where showbiz is headed, walk a few hundred yards off the Burbank Airport runway into a 125,000-square-foot complex of warehouses where Southwest jets roar over the roof and Amtrak trains rattle the walls. Inside is a maze of jail cells and hospital wards, courtrooms and classrooms. They are all sets where Dhar Mann and his team of 200 produce digital shows which, on a typical week, rack up nearly 300 million views across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Mann’s social channels have 160 million global followers. His content is translated into 13 languages. Last year Dhar Mann Studios earned an estimated $65 million in revenue from YouTube AdSense, Facebook In-Stream ads and brand deals with Adobe, Old Navy and the NFL.

“Most traditional studios create content and hope that the audience follows. We listen to the audience and follow what they want,” says Mann, 42. “We’re able to do it because of our quick feedback system and direct relationship with our audience.”

In a fractured and complex world, Mann’s videos are uplifting and easy to understand—24-minute Horatio Alger tales for the algorithm. Oscar-worthy they are not. Characters are cardboard, the plots predictable. Actors play singular archetypes: bully, victim, popular kid, ugly duckling. The hero always wins,........

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