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Our camera roll is somehow ninety percent screenshots of cliffhangers we swore we would come back to later. Later is a myth. We are just quietly building a case against ourselves.
One of vertical's biggest checks just cleared
Tel Aviv's Shortical just pulled in USD 100 million, one of the largest single checks the vertical business has seen, and it did it without giving up a slice of the company. The money comes from PvX Partners as user acquisition (UA) financing, non-dilutive credit tied to how well each cohort of viewers actually pays back, not a traditional equity round. So founder and chief executive Guy Shimoni keeps the keys and still gets a war chest.
What is Shortical buying with it? Reach. The app already ships more than 100 original scripted series, logs over 20 million episode views a month, and recently cracked the top ten highest grossing microdrama apps in the United States. In May it released Bound by Fire, its first fully artificial intelligence (AI) generated original. A hundred million dollars of paid growth on top of that is a plain bet: pour fuel on a library that is already converting.
Why this matters for you: More capital chasing viewers means more originals getting greenlit, and Shortical builds on scripted series, not just translated imports. If you write, direct, or act in vertical, a funded platform scaling its slate is another door opening. And non-dilutive money signals investors now trust these libraries to pay them back, which is exactly what keeps the greenlights coming.
Sources: Señal News · C21Media · FinSMEs · Hipther
🇺🇸 United States
1. Fox is buying Roku for about USD 22 billion, and it already owns a piece of vertical. Unveiled June 15, the deal pairs Fox content and the Tubi free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service with Roku's connected television (CTV) platform and its 100 million plus households, at roughly USD 160 a share, closing expected in 2027. Fox also holds equity in microdrama platform Holywater and a 200-series commitment, so the combined stack, microdrama equity plus a FAST service plus a CTV network, hands vertical a real route onto living room screens. No other traditional media company holds all three at once. → The Hollywood Reporter
2. VeYou wants to be "the HBO of vertical," and it just went shopping for a Musk biopic. Tommy Harper, the ex-Bad Robot chief operating officer behind Wednesday and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, told Deadline his AI-powered platform VeYou is building a premium library and has acquired a vertical biopic about Elon Musk to stock it. The pitch is a curated, prestige shelf rather than a volume play. A buyer building a shelf is a buyer you can pitch. → Deadline
3. Creative Artists Agency (CAA) is putting digital creators on the A-list, and letting them keep their IP. Per the New York Times, CAA is elevating creators like Trisha Paytas and Tana Mongeau to top-tier rosters once reserved for legacy stars, with YouTube playing sponsor matchmaker and talent retaining their intellectual property (IP). Viral filmmakers like Kane Parsons are using the platform as a launchpad into studio features. The keep-your-work model is the same leverage vertical-native talent is quietly building. → The New York Times
Here's what else is new:
Griff Furst launched a YouTube horror anthology by faking an entire AI startup. His series humAIn went live June 6 after a six-week alternate reality game that built a fake company, complete with a website, job listings and in-character Reddit threads, a direct-to-audience play that skips the studio gatekeepers entirely. → Programming Insider
Instagram is testing episodic series and horizontal video for its new TV app. Meta rolled Instagram for TV onto Samsung sets and began testing longer-form, episodic storytelling and live creator experiences, another surface where short-form makers can serialize their work. → The Hollywood Reporter
🌐 Worldwide
1. Comcast's Sky is buying ITV for about USD 2.1 billion, redrawing British television. Announced July 6, Sky's deal for ITV's media and entertainment arm (roughly GBP 1.6 billion) folds in ITV's free-to-air channels and the ITVX streaming service, about 16.5 million monthly active users (MAU), plus a separate USD 2.8 billion content pact with ITV Studios and the Great British Bake Off producer Love Productions. Combined, the two would touch more than 20 million UK households and over 70 percent of the country's television advertising. That is the buyer landscape every UK vertical pitch now has to read. → Deadline
2. Brazil's Grupo Abril, a 75-year-old publisher, launched a microdrama app. Pop! Pop! Pop! is free on Google Play, runs episodes of 90 seconds to 3 minutes, and uses a hybrid model: free ad-supported openers on Instagram, TikTok and Kwai, then about USD 1 per title or roughly USD 2 a month inside the app. The house behind Veja, which once founded MTV Brasil, plans nine more originals this year, betting on the country that leads the world in ReelShort viewing. A legacy publisher just became a new shelf for Portuguese-language vertical. → C Veintiuno
3. Cate Blanchett took an AI likeness-consent registry to the European Parliament. Blanchett presented the Human Consent Registry, a free public tool from the non-profit RSL Media she co-founded with Steven Soderbergh and others, letting people record exactly how AI may use their name and likeness, on the principle that your identity is your intellectual property. For vertical performers whose faces are increasingly cloned by AI, a consent ledger is a first line of defense. → Variety
Here's what else is new:
A hit microdrama, Rags 2 Richmond, wrapped shooting as a theatrical feature. The Canadian vertical series, 28 episodes and 9 million views in its first month, became a movie with Hong Kong stars Nancy Sit and Eric Tsang, a live test of the incubate-on-social-then-make-the-film content loop. → Deadline
Netflix asked France to cap how much local content it has to fund. The streamer warned it risks becoming France's single biggest private content investor, roughly USD 270 million in 2025, unless the rules change, a preview of the fights over who pays for European production. → Advanced Television
Today's Pick
Casting is where most vertical shoots quietly get made or broken, so this conversation with a casting director who has worked more than 80 microdramas is worth the commute: what earns a callback on a self-tape, and what film-and-TV crews keep getting wrong about the format. → Listen on Spotify
From Tel Aviv to São Paulo, somebody new bet on vertical this week. Good day to be the one making the stories.
Until tomorrow. Stay Vertical.
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