Laugh if you want, but Chick-fil-A’s plan to make TV shows is serious business for Hollywood

An earlier short film by Chick-fil-A

Chick-fil-A is pushing into the entertainment business, and the internet can’t stop cackling.

To recap: The fast-food chain known for its fried chicken and conservative values plans to add TV shows to its menu. Deadline, which was credited with breaking the news, reported that the chain was working with “a number of major production companies, including some of the studios, to create family-friendly shows, particularly in the unscripted space,” and was “in talks to license and acquire content.” Deadline said Chick-fil-A had already picked up “a family-friendly gameshow from Glassman Media, the company behind NBC’s ‘The Wall,'” and was working with Michael Sugar’s Sugar23, which is behind Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why.”

The news inspired plenty of jokes (Chick-philo? Merger opportunity?), questions (Would content be available to stream on Sundays?), and hand-wringing. “If Chick-fil-A is known for anything besides its chicken, it is probably the company’s long-standing institutional opposition to advancements in LGBTQ+ rights,” Vulture said.

But the news shouldn’t be a big surprise. Brands have been getting more serious about filmed entertainment for years, even before Barbie made her big-screen debut, because regular old TV ads don’t work for them as well as they used to. Starbucks, AB InBev, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola — the list of corporate giants using Hollywood to get their messages out goes on. In fact, Chick-fil-A has been making animated shorts for a few years.

Brands have sponsored filmed entertainment since the beginning of TV, but now they want to control their own destiny rather than just write a check. They’re hiring top Hollywood talent to help them and keeping the rights to the shows they make.

Brand Storytelling, an organization that holds a festival for brand films, has said it’s seen film submissions triple in recent years.

Brands have a bigger opening now as Hollywood budgets are stretched thin. In brands, Hollywood sees not just a source of new shows they need to keep subscribers but ad dollars to go with them.

Many filmmakers are glad to get the work, as the days of entertainment companies spending at any cost to catch Netflix are over. Just about every production company has an arm dedicated to brand work. Sugar23, one of the companies helping Chick-fil-A, has made a hard pivot in this direction. A new company called Sonic Gods Studios is going a step further, making brands central to how it funds shows. Its first show, a competition series called “60 Day Hustle” — financed by brands like BetterHelp, Chime, and Square — debuted on Amazon this month.

The results of brand forays into entertainment aren’t always inspiring. Many brand films feel like extended commercials. Forget about being sold; viewers will mostly be just bored.

We may not want our entertainment to come from the same people who give us laundry soap and sneakers — and fried-chicken sandwiches. But like it or not, given the state of both Hollywood and advertising, the trend is only likely to grow.