From the big screen to your mobile: Inside Disney’s Gen Z gambit

Meet the content stream of the future: movies, TV shows and a raft of next-generation spin-offs, coming to a mobile phone near you. While it’s true that bricks-and-mortar cinemas are going nowhere anytime soon, there is one inescapable truth dawning on Hollywood: the future is vertical.

YouTube calls them Shorts, Netflix calls them Clips and on Disney+ they are Verts: a bite-sized, swipe-able TikTok-style feed of short-form content, including trailers, typically aimed at upsizing you to the full movie or episode.

But following a new deal with TikTok, Disney’s Verts are expanding into fan-created content and, coupled with a suite of spin-offs pitched at younger audiences, including Ariel, The Lion Guard, Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures and Descendants: The Rise of Red, represent the studio’s most significant shift towards younger viewers in decades.

Critics might see this as the TikTok-ification of content, in the midst of the YouTube-ification of platforms: shrinking everything to the mobile phone, both in size and scale of ambition. Indeed, under the new deal, fan-created content would be seen on TikTok and inside the Disney+ app. That’s a substantial step past running trailers and preview clips.

But Shorts, Clips and Verts, and their longer form cousin, the “vertical drama”, may not be the cinematic death knell their critics might fear them to be.

The key detail: 2026 has also been an extraordinary year for bricks-and-mortar cinemas. Despite fears streaming would destroy movie houses, global ticket sales are up 15 per cent year-on-year, and five films have crossed the $US1 billion mark this year in global box office receipts.

They are Michael, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, from Universal Pictures, and Toy Story 5 and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, from Disney’s Marvel Studios and Sony.

Two more films – The Devil Wears Prada 2 (Disney) and Project Hail Mary (Amazon MGM and Sony) – are just shy of the $US700 million mark, and Disney has another monster hit due before the end of the year, Avengers: Doomsday, in December.

So what is going on? And why, when cinema is upsizing to IMAX for The Odyssey, is consumable content in the home downsizing? The answer may be generational, as companies like Disney sharpen their aim at new, younger audiences.

Earlier this month, as tens of thousands of fans moved through the D23 convention in Anaheim, California, showing off cosplay costumes, buying merchandise and engaging with the studio’s brand “activations”, behind closed doors its executives were outlining the future of the studio’s content strategy.

And central to that strategy, says Erin Teague, Disney’s executive vice-president of product management for Disney Entertainment and ESPN, is the “democratisation of creativity.”

“Next generations of fans are expecting more from their entertainment experience,” Teague told media in the closed-door press meeting. “They want to be a part of the story. They want to put themselves in the story. They want interactivity. They want to have more agency in the storytelling experience.”

Disney’s strategy includes a $US1.5 billion investment in Epic Games, which essentially lays down digital bedrock for gamers to engage with Disney IP – Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars and more – inside the Fortnite gameplay environment.

In addition to the studio’s suite of next-generation spin-offs, variously about younger versions of known characters (Ariel, Marvel’s Iron Man and his Awesome Friends) or siblings and offspring (The Lion Guard, Descendants: The Rise of Red), a substantial new slate for Pixar was unveiled at D23.

That included Incredibles 3, Coco 2 and Frozen 3, on top of original films Gatto, about a street-smart black cat, due out in 2027, and Ghost Market, Pixar’s first supernatural thriller, due out in 2028. There is also, separately, a Bluey movie.

There’s a good reason for that. As much as rusted-on fans might not like to hear it, key pieces of the Disney ecosystem are showing their age. Star Wars, the home of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, turns 50 next year. Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is in phase six, almost two decades after phase one began. Even Thor is starting to look a little long in the hammer.

Along with vertical content, however, all roads ultimately lead back to the central content funnel, Disney+. In the past two years the studio has consolidated its assets under the brand, including Hulu, its US-streamer, which is now tucked inside the Australian Disney+ app, and its sports streaming app, ESPN.

Eric Schrier, the president of Disney Television Studios, said the strategy was intended to join dots for new audiences, who have not watched older, institutional content such as The Simpsons, Star Wars or even Disney live-action films, but might sample them via the streamer’s vertical and other content.

“It gives us an opportunity to take a generation that is consuming most of this content in short form and introducing them to something like The Simpsons,” Schrier told the D23 press briefing. “They may not watch the traditional Simpsons show. They may see clips online, they may see curation, and then eventually become fans of The Simpsons and watch the whole show completely.”

And all of this comes as Hollywood obsesses about vertical dramas, the phone-sized, modestly budgeted soap operas which have effectively turned handbags into home entertainment consoles.

Last month, Atlanta hosted the first vertical film festival, Vertex Micro Fest, which focused on short-form vertical content, “micro-dramas” and “AI-powered” stories, while Los Angeles last week hosted Verticon, a fan convention where fans and vertical drama stars pressed the flesh for three days.

Verticon also played host to the Verties, the vertical content world’s answer to the Emmys or Oscars. The best actor and actress awards went to Cayman Cardiff (Seducing My Hockey Rival) and Nicole Mattox (Found a Homeless Billionaire Husband for Christmas); vertical of the year was the romantic thriller Swipe Left: Dying for Love, from indie studio muVpix.

Setting aside the eyebrow-raising titles, the vertical content business is now worth about $US150 billion globally; vertical dramas account for about $US14 billion of that.

At Disney, the vertical strategy was initially tested as a sidebar product within the company’s ESPN ecosystem, before being rolled out widely. What testing in sport revealed, Teague said, was that time-challenged consumers were seeking a way of engaging with the major hits.

“There’s no replacement for the live sports viewing experience, but … thinking about the different ways people are busy, there’s a fight for attention,” Teague said.

“People are consuming the live content, but they’re also catching up with key plays, with highlights, and all of that content is short, and actually better natively for a mobile consumption experience,” she said. Teague said viewer engagement had doubled since Verts were launched.

In the end, however, replacing legacy IP with enduring appeal will be tough. Disney’s vertical content play can map the Star Wars universe infinitely outward, but few characters can match Princess Leia or Darth Vader for audience recognition, engagement and loyalty.

“There will never be a replacement for that long-form original content,” Teague said. “But what is interesting is the way that it is now being supplemented by the shorter form analysis, the clips. Similarly, [in sport] there’s no replacement for the live game. But the additional commentary and analysis around the game is just as interesting.

“The ways that we can merge those experiences to give people exactly what they want, when they want it in a split second, is the challenge.”

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