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Overheard at the gym: "I cannot do my cardio without an episode running." We have quietly become the same animal. The treadmill is just a second screen we happen to be standing on.
Pathaan's studio is chasing vertical's first franchise
Yash Raj Films, the Bollywood major behind the Pathaan, War and Tiger spy universe, just made a strategic investment in Rusk Media, the digital-first studio behind the Alright! TV platform, announced June 28. Financial terms were not disclosed. Under the deal, Yash Raj steers the creative direction of original animation and microdrama intellectual property (IP), while Rusk handles production and distribution to Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences. A studio that builds seven-film franchises just pointed that muscle at the phone.
Rusk, co-founded by Mayank Yadav, recently raised about USD 12M (₹100 crore) in a round led by Nazara Technologies. "Vertical entertainment in India has produced extraordinary reach, but not the enduring IP that defines a category. That is the gap this collaboration is designed to close," Yadav said, adding the goal is "building for longevity, not the algorithm." Yash Raj CEO Akshaye Widhani framed it plainly: "Platforms are infrastructure, content and IP are culture." India's microdrama market sits near USD 300M today and is projected to reach roughly USD 4.5B by 2030.
Why this matters for you: A franchise studio is now shopping for vertical worlds that outlast one viral spike, not just the next cliffhanger. If you can build characters people come back for, there is a buyer in the room who measures success in sequels.
Sources: Variety · C21Media · Storyboard18 · Real Reel
🇺🇸 United States
1. A B-movie legend drops a werewolf horror on ReelShort. Charles Band and his vertical banner Full Moon Artists licensed Models vs. Werewolves, featuring genre icon Dee Wallace (E.T., Cujo, The Howling), to ReelShort for a vertical premiere, the platform's second Band collaboration. Horror has officially found its vertical lane. The film gets a wider widescreen release across Tubi, Vudu and Prime Video on Aug. 16. → Variety
2. Tubi's creator slate jumps to the living-room screen. Fox's Tubi is bringing its Creatorverse lineup, more than 20,000 episodes from over 300 creators, to Amazon Fire TV, with brands on Amazon's demand-side platform (DSP) getting priority access to that ad inventory and Tubi's 100M-plus monthly active users (MAU). Creator-led video keeps getting bigger screens to live on. → Variety
3. Vertical's actors get a convention of their own. VertiCon returns to Los Angeles this August with actor panels, photo ops and meet-and-greets, plus The Verties, a live in-person awards show built specifically for vertical performers. The format that started in a phone now throws a red carpet for its stars. → VertiCon
Here's what else is new:
Adobe scoops up Topaz Labs and its artificial intelligence (AI) cleanup toolkit. The June 25 deal folds Topaz's Emmy-winning upscaling, restoration and footage-blending models into Adobe's editing suite, the same tools that make fast, cheap vertical shoots look polished. → Variety
Performers draw a line on AI voice rights. Nearly 1,000 actors, agents and parents signed an open letter against a major studio demanding child voice actors sign their voices over for AI, a precedent that lands hard on a format already leaning on AI dubbing and voice clones. → Variety
🌐 Worldwide
1. A Nolly-Bollywood microdrama pairs an "imported bride" with a Bollywood lead. Imported Bahu, starring Nigeria's Osas Ighodaro opposite Bollywood's Rajniesh Duggall and created by filmmaker Hamisha Daryani Ahuja, premieres July 2 as Forever 7 Entertainment's first vertical microdrama. Two of the world's biggest film cultures, stacked into one phone screen. → Tribune
2. A UK platform turns one prompt into an animated microdrama. Guy Gadney launched Charismatic.ai, billed as the first generative AI platform built for microdramas, taking an idea to an animated serialized story in under 15 minutes; partners include Channel 4 and Aardman Animations, and the company says it wants creators paid for their ideas. The build time just dropped to the length of a coffee break. → Broadcast
3. Japan's Fuji TV pushes its vertical app overseas. Fuji TV's shortform drama app FOD Short, the No. 1 domestic short-drama publisher in Japan by revenue and downloads, has launched in the US and Canada with 39 subtitled originals, its first overseas move and the start of a rollout aimed at 100-plus countries and 10 languages. A legacy broadcaster is exporting vertical, not just importing the trend. → C21Media
Here's what else is new:
Chile's TVN builds its own vertical hub. Public broadcaster TVN launched TVN Vertical with a romcom microdrama from director Boris Quercia and writer Diego Ayala, two titles already out and a plan for at least 10 more across romance and thriller. → C21Media
Brussels and London open their books on Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. The European Commission and the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) both opened reviews of the USD 111B merger, probing about USD 24B in Gulf sovereign-fund financing, a follow-up to the deal's June Justice Department clearance that resets the buyer landscape every vertical platform is pitching into. → Variety
Today's Pick
GoodShort co-founder Brenda Cheong breaks down what is actually driving the microdrama surge, from production speed to why the format fits modern attention spans, in a clear-eyed operator's read on where the money and the audience are going. → Read in Forbes
The race to build vertical's first lasting franchise is wide open, and the person who can make us care for ten straight episodes is the one holding the keys.
Until tomorrow. Stay Vertical.
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