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.