Thom Chapman, co-founder and CEO of 5th Wall, delivers a “ghost story for studio boardrooms,” as he weighs in on churn, price hikes, social video, and the challenges of sustained, ongoing fan engagement.
5th Wall is an engagement platform for studios and franchise owners, turning fandom into direct relationships, first-party data, and new revenue opportunities.
This Halloween, two million American adults plan to dress as Batman, according to the National Retail Federation. Adults will spend an estimated $2 billion on costumes across all characters. For the studios behind those stories, it is an extraordinary display of devotion. By November, the costumes will be back in drawers. The love that sold them can last for years, even when the studio has little direct contact with the person wearing them.
That should haunt a studio boardroom. People will spend money to become a character for an evening, yet a streaming service still has to persuade them to stay another month. Between the two sits a relationship the industry too often leaves others to build. Four horsemen are riding through that gap.
The first is churn. In the first quarter of 2026, Antenna counted 44.1 million sign-ups to premium U.S. streaming services and 40.8 million cancellations: roughly 93 cancellations for every 100 sign-ups across the market. A viewer can arrive for one show and leave when it ends. The affection for the story may survive the cancellation, but the next season still has to earn its way back into that viewer’s life. A service selling access by the month needs reasons to stay that last beyond the finale.
The second is the price ceiling. Keeping that viewer gets harder as the bill rises. Streaming sold itself as the end of ad breaks; now viewers have to weigh the price of avoiding them. In early 2024, Amazon introduced ads into its included on-demand films and shows in the U.S. and charged an extra $2.99 a month for ad-free viewing. That add-on rose to $4.99 in April 2026. Netflix raised every U.S. plan this March, taking its ad-free Standard tier to $19.99 a month.
Higher bills put another decision in front of the subscriber. Those on ad-supported plans still have the interruptions, while a devoted fan on the same plan pays the same monthly price as someone who came for a single show. Each increase tests how much the service is worth to both. Charging the committed fan more is a thin strategy for keeping them close.
The third is the free rider. TikTok says more than 12 million TV and film posts were published globally each day over the past year. Some come from fans; some come from accounts built on clips of work they don’t own. CBC reported in June 2023 that chopped-up films and shows had drawn billions of views on TikTok. Accounts drawing that attention can make money in various ways and build a following around someone else’s stories.
As YouTube’s share of U.S. television-set viewing grows to a record 15.8% of U.S. TV time in August, according to Nielsen, the question of who builds the audience around a story becomes harder to ignore. Rights holders can earn from matching uploads through Content ID. But a fan who follows a clip account gives that account a reason to bring them back tomorrow. The studio may own the work while another account becomes the place people return to discuss it, discover more, and decide what to watch next.
The fourth is the blind spot. On Halloween night, millions of people will walk out of their homes wearing their affection for a story. A costume purchase is a clear expression of that affection, but it need not give the studio a direct way to invite its buyer to the next experience. Turning fandom into ticket sales requires a way to reach the people who already care.
Netflix now runs venues of more than 100,000 square feet in Dallas and King of Prussia, outside Philadelphia. Together with its subscriber accounts, they give it a direct route to potential customers; other rights holders can be further removed from their fans. The same problem returns when a show comes back.
Streaming has a familiar sophomore slump: second seasons often return to smaller audiences. The affection that filled a group chat during season one needs somewhere to live while the show is away, so the studio has a better chance of bringing those fans back.
Churn, higher prices, free riders and the blind spot all expose the distance between loving a story and having a relationship with the company behind it. A subscription can lapse while that love remains. A costume, a clip or a conversation can carry it elsewhere.
Halloween makes that devotion visible for one night. Studios need to give it somewhere to go for the rest of the year: a place fans choose to return to after the credits, where the next season and the next ticket sale begin with people who already care.
