Fox Creator Studios signs Josh Richards, Emelia Hartford, and 5 more for 7 new series

Fox Creator Studios is partnering with seven creator channels, including Josh Richards and Emelia Hartford, to develop a slate spanning longform entertainment and shortform unscripted series. Fox says it will co-produce and develop new creator-led projects, with the creators collectively reaching over 65 million followers.

For Richards and Richardson, this is not just a cameo. Fox Creator Studios will help co-produce Seasons 2 and 3 of Josh Richards' “Read the Room,” and it will produce Seasons 3 and 4 of Christina Richardson’s “Besties,” following two successful seasons independently produced by Richardson. In other words: Fox is stepping into creator IP at the season scale, not treating creators as one-off viral suppliers.

The studio is led by Billy Parks, executive vice president and head of Fox Creator Studios, who told TheWrap that Fox’s goal is to develop premium intellectual properties by leveraging Fox’s ad sales, brand partnership, global distribution, and production infrastructure. Parks framed the partnership as an effort to grow creators without overriding their creative leadership. He emphasized that Fox spent time analyzing the current creator ecosystem after launching in January, so it could understand the “best way to partner with this new generation of talent.”

That creator-first stance matters because studio-backed ventures often go one of two directions: either they try to drive content into a specific distribution funnel, or they build a distinct IP portfolio that can travel across formats and platforms. Fox Creator Studios explicitly signals it wants the second path. Parks said creators should lead both on what content gets made and where it makes the most sense for that content to live. He described working with creators doing reality formats, scripted formats, shortform and longform, and creators who are starting new channels with new IP versus more established creators building on what they already built.

The lineup itself is a quick tour of where creator entertainment is getting serious about “formats,” not just feeds.

Richards' sketch series “Read the Room” will see Fox Creator Studios partner on Seasons 2 and 3, with production coming from Richards' production company CrossCheck Studios and his business partner Chris Sawtelle. The first season secured over 60 million views in only four weeks, and Season 2 is scheduled to premiere in August.

Hartford’s automotive identity gets a studio-backed interview show. Emelia Hartford, with 8.2 million followers, will helm “Hot Laps,” a celebrity interview series that pairs high-speed track driving with candid conversations featuring Hollywood stars, athletes, and cultural icons. Her production company Running Lean Productions and Justin Killion of Bright Bay will also produce the series.

Speed Co’s “Then vs. Now” brings the “why did society change?” angle to educational series. With Speed Co at 3.5 million followers, the show compares products, experiences, and cultural habits across generations to determine what improved, what declined, and what history got right, featuring and being produced by James Pumphrey, Zach Redpath, and Jesse Wood.

Food creators get two flavors of comedic competition. Sorted Food’s “In Bad Taste” turns a dinner party into a game of deception, with guests navigating a tasting menu packed with hidden surprises who must bluff, accuse, and outwit each other to win. TheWrap notes it was part of the launch announcement of Fox Creator Studios in January, and says it’s the first project from FCS in production, led by Jamie Spafford, Barry Taylor, Mike Huttlestone, and Ben Ebbrell.

MyHealthyDish, aka My Nguyen (13 million followers), brings family teaching to scripted warmth in “My Daughters: Cooked,” a family cooking series following Nguyen as she teaches her twin teenage daughters how to cook before they leave for college. Emmy Award winning Mike Duffy of YumCrunch will produce the series.

Christina Richardson’s world expands further with Fox producing Seasons 3 and 4 of “Besties,” the scripted vertical series she created and directed. Richardson’s “Besties” follows a group of friends navigating relationships, identity, ambition, and the challenges of adulthood, now moving from independent seasons into Fox Creator Studios production.

Finally, Mad Realities is getting two series through Fox Creator Studios. “The Love Tank” is described as a fast-paced dating series where singles compete in real time for a chance at romance. “Picky Eaters,” hosted by rising food creator Mehreen Karim, is the culinary competition show where chefs battle to impress notoriously selective guests.

One more detail adds to the strategic read-through: Fox previously announced that culinary icon Gordon Ramsay and comedian Tom Segura would be part of its lineup. That suggests Fox Creator Studios is building a broader creator ecosystem, where entertainment IP can come from different creator categories, then be scaled through Fox’s infrastructure.

So what does this mean for executives watching the creator economy from the boardroom? It’s a clear signal that the “creator studio” play is moving from partnership-as-experiment to partnership-as-portfolio. Fox is positioning its advantage around ad sales, brand partnership, global distribution, and production, while insisting the creators keep the creative steering wheel. For peers, the second-order question is simple and uncomfortable: if studios increasingly co-produce seasons and wrap creator worlds into premium IP, will the next competitive moat be owned by platforms, studios, or the creators themselves? Fox’s answer, so far, is a negotiated middle where creators lead, and Fox brings scale to the outcome.