Q1 2026 Hollywood Buyer Activity: 4,945 Signals from 860 Buyers

ScriptMatch logged 4,945 in-scope buyer signals across Q1 2026 (January 1 through March 31), drawn from roughly 860 unique buyers active in the indie acquisition market. Netflix anchored the top of the chart at 583 signals over the quarter. A24 was the only specialty distributor in the top 10, sitting between Hulu and Apple TV+ with 89 signals across 80 distinct trade-press articles. Drama led the genre breakdown by a wide margin at 2,031 tagged signals. Comedy came in second at 1,094, with documentary third at 889.

Three patterns are worth pulling out before the numbers turn into noise. First, the top of the buyer table is almost entirely streamers: seven of the ten most-active buyers in Q1 are platforms or studio-platform hybrids. Second, 556 new in-scope buyers entered our data in Q1, meaning the buyer pool is widening as fast as the established names are consolidating. Third, signal volume rose every month of the quarter (1,468 in January, 1,614 in February, 1,863 in March), which points to an accelerating market rather than the post-strike doldrums some writers were still expecting heading into the year.

The full report is below, with the buyer-by-buyer breakdown and the genre-level data underneath.

The 10 most active buyers of Q1 2026

These are the in-scope buyers (distributors, streamers, sales agents, production companies) with the highest volume of distinct trade-press signals during the quarter. Signal counts are not deal counts; one buyer can generate multiple signals from one article when they appear in multiple capacities (acquisition plus packaging plus exec movement, for example). What this table actually measures is trade-press presence, which correlates with but is not identical to deal flow.

| Rank | Buyer | Signals | Distinct articles | |---|---|---:|---:| | 1 | Netflix | 583 | 578 | | 2 | Amazon MGM Studios | 289 | 265 | | 3 | Disney+ | 153 | 153 | | 4 | Paramount+ | 144 | 141 | | 5 | HBO | 93 | 93 | | 6 | Hulu | 90 | 89 | | 7 | A24 | 89 | 80 | | 8 | Apple TV+ | 78 | 77 | | 9 | HBO Max | 77 | 77 | | 10 | Lionsgate | 69 | 69 |

A note on the HBO entries: HBO and HBO Max appear as separate rows because our ingestion treats them as distinct brands, which they technically are (HBO the cable channel and Max the streaming service operate under different content mandates and report differently in the trade press). If you combine them as one operational unit, the combined entity slots at second place behind Netflix with 170 signals.

The biggest absence from the top 10 worth noting: Neon. Neon logged 45 Q1 signals across 37 articles, which puts it at 15th and well behind A24. That tracks with how Neon publicly operates: fewer headline acquisitions per quarter, more selective festival positioning, more concentrated bets. The signal-volume framing of this report rewards breadth more than depth, so a buyer like Neon will always look smaller here than its actual market influence suggests. The Neon profile carries the longer-arc context.

What the genre numbers say

Signals tagged with each genre across Q1 2026. One signal can be tagged with multiple genres (a drama-thriller registers under both), so the totals do not sum to the 4,945 grand total.

| Genre | Tagged Q1 signals | |---|---:| | Drama | 2,031 | | Comedy | 1,094 | | Documentary | 889 | | Thriller | 710 | | Horror | 413 | | Action | 398 | | Family | 316 | | Crime | 289 | | Sci-fi | 276 | | Animation | 269 | | Romance | 172 | | Fantasy | 132 |

The most interesting line here is comedy at 1,094. For most of 2023 and 2024, the conventional wisdom in the trade press was that comedy acquisitions had effectively collapsed at the studio and platform level. The Q1 data does not support a collapse story. It shows the second-most-active genre by signal volume, behind only drama, with material participation from streamers and production companies alike. What changed is the SHAPE of comedy that gets acquired: hybrid comedy-drama, dark comedy, and elevated comedy with a directorial voice make up a disproportionate share of the activity, but the category as a whole is healthier than the narrative suggested.

The second worth flagging: documentary at 889. That places documentary above thriller and horror combined for the quarter. The surge that started in late 2024 is still running, and the buyer pool for non-fiction is more international than the fiction side of the chart suggests. The documentary buyers genre page walks through which buyers are most active in this lane right now.

Horror at 413 will surprise some readers given how the trade press talks about the genre. The honest read on this number: horror has fewer buyers than drama or comedy, but the buyers in horror are highly active and concentrated. Blumhouse alone produces a slate that distorts the per-buyer math in horror's favor. The horror buyers page has the right context for how that concentration works.

Three patterns worth sitting with

The streamer-platform consolidation is real. Seven of the top ten buyers by signal volume are streamers or studio-platform hybrids (Netflix, Amazon MGM, Disney+, Paramount+, HBO, Hulu, Apple TV+, HBO Max). The traditional theatrical distributors that anchored the top of this chart five years ago (Warner Bros., Universal, Sony) appear lower in the rankings now, not because they stopped buying but because the platforms are buying more, more publicly, across a wider mandate. Writers who treat platforms as a backup tier behind studios are reading the market backwards.

A24 is doing something nobody else is doing. Specialty distributors typically generate dozens of signals per quarter, not 89. A24 at the top of the specialty tier is unsurprising; A24 mixing into the top 10 alongside the platforms is the actual headline. The company is acquiring at near-platform velocity while keeping its specialty positioning. That has not been true of any other indie distributor in the post-2020 market.

The long tail is widening, not consolidating. 556 new in-scope buyers entered the database during Q1. Some of these are new entities (production companies launched in the last 12 months). Some are existing entities that produced their first trade-press signal during Q1, which functionally means they were inactive enough through 2025 that they did not register. Either way, the indie buyer pool is not shrinking. Writers who hear "the market is contracting" should weigh that against the fact that ScriptMatch added 556 new active buyers to its tracked set in a single quarter.

What this means for writers right now

The practical read on this data is genre-dependent.

For drama writers: The deepest acquisition lane in the market is still drama, and the buyers active in it span every tier from specialty to streamer. The bar for what reads as fresh is high, and most of the active spec acquisitions flow through producer-driven options rather than direct distributor sales. The drama buyers page lays out which buyers are most active in this lane.

For comedy writers: The narrative that comedy is dead is wrong. The numbers say comedy is the second-most-active acquisition lane in the market. What is true is that the shape of comedy getting bought has shifted. Hybrid forms (comedy-drama, dark comedy) are leading the activity, and platform-driven elevated comedy is open in a way pure broad comedy is not. The comedy buyers page has the active buyer set.

For horror writers: The signal counts undersell the genre. Horror buyers are concentrated and highly active. If you are writing in this lane, you should be reading the horror buyers page and tracking the specific buyers (Blumhouse, Neon, A24, IFC Midnight, Shudder) who anchor the genre's deal flow.

For documentary filmmakers: The market is still surging. Documentary signal volume is running ahead of thriller and horror combined. The acquisition pathway is different from fiction (sizzle reel plus producer attached opens more doors than a treatment alone), and the buyer pool skews more international.

For everyone: The Q1 data does not support the "Hollywood is closed" story. It also does not support the "everything is back to normal" story. What it supports is a market with a small number of very active platforms at the top, a widening base of indie production companies at the bottom, and a small number of specialty distributors (A24 being the clearest example) doing things at scale that did not exist in the indie distribution playbook ten years ago.

Methodology note

All counts in this report are drawn from ScriptMatch's buyer-intelligence database. Signals are extracted from public trade-press reporting and aggregated against buyer entities in the database. The full method behind the numbers is documented on the methodology page, including which industry publications we monitor, what the publication gate requires for a buyer to earn a public profile, and what we deliberately do not claim. If you want to cite this report, the canonical URL is scriptmatch.ai/insider/q1-2026-buyer-activity-report.

The next quarterly report will cover Q2 2026 (April through June) and is scheduled to publish in mid-July.