#Ryan’s World Is a YouTube Success. Will Movie Have Same Appeal?

Twelve-year-old Ryan Kaji lives with his parents and younger twin sisters in a Honolulu neighborhood that is so idyllic it feels almost impossible. As you leave behind the tourist center of Waikiki Beach, the looming time share towers and overpriced T-shirt stores start to recede, making way for the winding roads and lush landscapes that the Kama’āina revere. The Kajis are transplants, having left Houston for these far greener pastures during the depths of the pandemic. Ryan had recently become the most famous kid in the world, and his mother and father, Loann and Shion, thought the bucolic surroundings would offer him peace and respite as he parlayed his YouTube success into an empire.

In the spring of 2015, when Ryan was 4 years old, he was a fan and a viewer of the then-burgeoning trend of YouTube toy reviews. His parents agreed to let him upload his own clips, in which he would dramatically unbox his latest acquisition. These seemed to have a hypnotic effect on young viewers, and the click counts began to creep up. Loann noticed how much fun Ryan was having — and how quickly the cost of purchasing the toys for review was adding up. A few Google searches revealed that if she monetized the videos, there was a chance she could earn enough money to break even. “When we started making 50 cents a day, we were ecstatic,” she says. “Then [YouTube] mailed us a physical check for $100, and we sort of couldn’t believe we’d be able to pay for his hobby.” Now, the brand known as Ryan’s World has 83 billion lifetime views across its various YouTube channels, with 34 billion minutes watched last year alone. (Forbes has consistently listed Ryan among the highest-paid YouTubers. The family won’t discuss their financials, but their net worth has been estimated in the nine figures.) The Kajis, who also act as Ryan’s managers — Shion, an engineer, focuses more on the business, while Loann, a former high school chemistry teacher, oversees the children’s education — brought Ryan’s younger sisters, Emma and Kate, into the fold and launched their own production company, Sunlight.

Ryan seems to have little in common with the über-famous child stars of linear TV. Sure, there are signs of his success; their expansive, impressive home is a far cry from the modest space where the family first launched the channel, and nearly every wall is decorated with the toys at the center of it all. (In 2018, the team launched the first-ever major toy line from a digital creator, and the products — including mystery eggs, games and branded backpacks and T-shirts — have since earned more than $1 billion at retail, according to Sunlight.) But spend time with Ryan, and you get the sense that he finds his success to be the least interesting thing about him. He attends an academically rigorous school in Honolulu, and his days are packed with extracurriculars like Japanese lessons, skateboarding, tennis and swimming. His favorite thing about his side hustle? He answers with the adorable filial devotion of a tween who has yet to rebel: “Getting to hang out with my family.”

The Kajis have mapped out a business plan in three phases. Phase one covered their comparatively humble beginnings, when it was just their family churning out videos and just Ryan as the face of it all. They’re currently a few years into phase two, which is marked by the addition of Emma and Kate Kaji, Ryan’s 7-year-old sisters. The eventual third phase will involve the addition of even more on-camera talent. The Kajis have also struck a lucrative partnership with pocket.watch, a studio that builds kid-focused digital creators into full-on entertainment franchises. CEO Chris Williams, who spent decades working in the creator economy at brands like Maker Studios and Disney, launched pocket.watch in 2017 after noticing a surge in popularity in kids and family content on YouTube and a subsequent decline in linear kids television. “I kept looking at the online kids’ talent and IP and wondering, ‘Why aren’t we expanding them in the same way we expand all these traditional brands?’ ” says Williams.

When he met with the Kajis, Williams found that their goals mirrored his own aspirations. Shion and Loann were interested in getting into animated content, television and consumer products, all with an eye toward eventually diversifying the brand away from Ryan — thus lessening the burden of the brand’s success on him. “It was clear that the Kajis were the gold standard for what parents should be within this world,” he says. “They’re prioritizing their kids’ health, well-being, education and social development.” For the Kajis’ part, they knew they needed help going beyond YouTube and were confident that the executives understood their needs. “If any of this started to feel like work for Ryan, he won’t have fun,” says Loann. “And I need this to be really fun for him.”

Soon after signing Ryan, pocket.watch created the series Ryan’s Mystery Playdate — a semi-educational show that used puzzles, games and challenges to reveal the play date during each episode — which ran on Nickelodeon for five seasons. “There’s been a bit of a stigma associated with YouTube kids content and screen time on devices, so taking an IP like Ryan and putting it next to Paw Patrol and SpongeBob created a strong brand association,” Williams says. “Now we have that context for parents, and as we’re watching the acceleration of the decline in linear audiences, we can bring people over to our own subscription service for the same IP.”

Ryan paved the road for a generation of kid-driven, family-managed YouTube juggernauts. And while some of his imitators now eclipse his original channel’s subscriber numbers — the Ukrainian American Kids Diana Show, another pocket.watch client, has 124 million YouTube followers compared with Ryan’s World’s 38 million — he is inarguably the most influential of the bunch, the poster child for children who post.

This summer, he will lead the way yet again, with the release of Ryan’s World the Movie: Titan Universe Adventure on Aug. 16, making him the first digital creator to secure a theatrical feature. Williams says the live-action/animated film, premiering on 2,100 screens nationwide, is integral to extending the life of Ryan’s World. Shot on a budget of less than $10 million, it follows Ryan as he travels into the world of a comic book to save his younger sisters. (The NeverEnding Story was a key inspiration.) Shion and Loann served as producers on the project, overseeing the creative direction, recruitment of talent and other creative partners, and even appearing in the film alongside their kids. (Shion also has popped up in Ryan’s videos.) They brought in Albie Hecht — head producer of the Nickelodeon show — to direct the live-action portion, and hired Shin-Ei Animation, the Japanese animation studio behind the popular anime series Doraemon and Crayon Shinchan, to create the rest.

As the movie’s release approaches, the family feels the pressure of being first out of the gate. “It can be hard to be the one blazing the trail,” says Shion. “It feels like, if we fail at this, then other YouTubers might not have a chance.” Williams is quick to note the impressive marketing machine behind the film. In addition to its other services, pocket.watch runs a division called Clockwork, which leverages the company’s assets on behalf of a traditional studio clientele. “We’re one of only a handful of companies that Google had granted third-party ad sales rights to be able to serve ads directly into YouTube Kids,” he says. “So we control hundreds of millions of ad impressions, in addition to our 50-plus creators who can create custom content on behalf of clients. I’m cashing in on 30 years of karma to make this successful.”

It’s hard to calculate what will constitute a theatrical success this first time around. The Kajis put what they describe as a “huge” personal investment toward the movie’s production but say they already feel proud that they were able to create a story that centers their own family values and shows kids you can achieve anything you put your mind to: “You start out as just a YouTuber reviewing toys with a $20-a-week budget and then years later you can be a movie star,” says Shion. Ryan says he had a blast making the movie and that hitting the promotion circuit — including an appearance at the Kids Choice Awards and the Bentonville Film Festival — is giving him the chance to meet more of his fans and let them get to know him as a person. “Plus, it just feels really cool that people are going to go to the movie theater to see something that I helped create,” he adds. Williams and the pocket.watch team say the film’s relatively low budget means the bar for success isn’t impossibly high. “It’s not Inside Out 2 — it’s more like Paw Patrol,” he says. “Outcomes are wildly variable on theatrical projects, but we’re feeling fairly confident based on the data so far. And we’ll know success when we see it.”

Ryan’s World the Movie will also help usher in the Kajis’ third phase of the business, which is to find the next Ryan. He’s a preteen now, and as he gets older, his core demographic stays the same age (3-7). “The dynamic between Ryan and his fans has changed over time,” says Shion. “Initially he was their best friend, he was someone they can relate to. Now he’s a role model.” The family is mindful not to let his lucrative career box him in — Loann, especially, wants him to go to college and choose his own path. The Kajis have been auditioning on-camera talent for the past year, looking for kids with authentic, distinct energy and, most importantly, parents with ethics that line up with their own. Before they fully enter the third phase, both the family and the executives at pocket.watch seek to expand the business in ways that don’t require more time or work from Ryan (by leaning into animation, for example, and pushing further into consumer products).

Ryan’s parents, however, are happy to keep at it as long as they need to. Shion says he derives great joy from the work, and he and his wife remain in disbelief at the way the business has allowed them to provide for the family. When Ryan started posting his unboxing videos and toy reviews, the financial hardships of raising three children were constantly looming. Now, in addition to their new Honolulu digs, they’re (easily) able to cover private school tuition, pricey extracurriculars, piano lessons and a yearly wintertime trip to Japan (Shion was born in Tokyo) so the kids can practice snowboarding. “We want the whole world to be their playground,” he says. “We try to make sure that we use this opportunity, that just started on YouTube, to the kids’ every advantage. We want it all to come back to them.”

This story first appeared in the August 14 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.