Brooklyn Peltz-Beckham, Cedric the Entertainer and More Taught Us A Thing About Business at Tribeca X
By Elizabeth Paige Richardson | June 9, 2026 | Celebrity & Culture
On June 8 in downtown Manhattan, a host of business leaders, entrepreneurs, and fresh creative voices came together at Spring Studios for a day of networking and panels at day one of Tribeca X.
The event goes hand-in-hand with the current landscape of independent films hosted at the film festival, as indie filmmakers try to scrape together investment and build visibility in the entertainment industry. There was plenty to discuss on the Tribeca X main stage, thanks to wild changes in the creative landscape.
One of the panel highlights included “The Creative Handoff,” a conversation on storytelling between father and son David and Finn Druga. While both of them are writers at different stages of their career, they agreed that embracing your human emotions will be essential in standing out as more companies and creatives come around to using AI to streamline the creative process.
They agreed that holding on to a sense of whimsy and ability to think—the daydreamers, as David called them—is a key to making something that audiences will buy into. Nowhere is that more obvious than the success of Backrooms, the horror movie dominating theaters. The film was directed by YouTube creator-turned-film director Kane Parsons, 20.
Another highlight of the panel schedule was “From Viral to Valuable,” where the head of development at Patreon, Stephanie Smellies, Chronical CEO Aaron Sisto, and creatives sat down to discuss building an audience that will stay. The big takeaway is that all great business and creative moves are defined by being intentional; an audience tunes in again and again for authenticity and familiarity, not for the next viral moment.
Other panels of the day had a variety of celebrity entrepreneurs on the main stage, including Brooklyn Peltz-Beckham, Cedric the Entertainer, and news anchor Abby Phillip.
