Starbucks is teaming up with an Oscar-winning producer to make Hollywood-style movies and series

It’s working with Sugar23 — the production company headed by Michael Sugar, best known for the Oscar-winning “Spotlight” — to develop projects. The past year, Sugar has been pitching brands on his ability to help them co-create and own entertainment as a more effective tactic than traditional ads. Sugar also helped AB InBev launch an entertainment effort in 2023 and worked with Procter & Gamble, Time Studios, and Trevor Noah’s Day Zero Productions on the docuseries “The Tipping Point.”

Starbucks’ forays into original entertainment go back to 2016, when it released “Upstanders,” a series of 10 written, video, and podcast stories about people creating positive change. It followed that up in 2019 with “Hingakawa,” a documentary short about a coffee co-op that united people in post-genocide Rwanda, and “This is Football,” which aired on Amazon’s Prime Video.

Many marketers are trying to make content that looks and feels like pure editorial or entertainment as traditional advertising’s effectiveness has waned.

“The masses consume entertainment, so if we can create a relationship with entertainment, it’s a new loyalty program in disguise,” Sugar said of the partnership during a panel at the conference Tribeca X on Monday. “Starbucks is being very bold with this but really very smart … You can’t reach 30 million people on NBC anymore.”

Brands are encouraged by streamers like Max and Netflix adding ad-supported tiers, and Apple and Amazon seeking collaborations with marketers.

And production companies like Sugar23 are increasingly looking to work with brands because they’re another potential source of revenue as streamers greenlight fewer shows to get to profitability. Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment and Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine are among those that have brand divisions.