Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microseries and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s redefining what it means to make and watch scripted content in the mobile age.
This week, we’re doing something a little different. Scott spent the week at MIPCOM in Cannes, where the worlds of traditional entertainment and digital storytelling are increasingly converging. We’re bringing you the latest industry news, followed by Scott’s stream of consciousness, firsthand account of his experience, one day at a time.
And the excitement doesn’t stop in Cannes! The inaugural ALZA Festival kicks off in New York City October 16–18, bringing the vertical storytelling community together for three days of premieres, screenings, and conversations. We’ll have more on that below, plus exclusive insights from the festival in next week’s edition.
But first, Postcards from MIPCOM.
Day 0: The Day Before MIPCOM
I get into Paris on Sunday and take another plane to Nice. It’s nice. I realize that I shouldn’t have taken a cab because it costs twice as much as an Uber, but it’s fine because the driver is young and friendly and assures me that AI will not destroy the world, and coming from a Frenchman driving a used Renault, that feels real enough. I get into Cannes and my apartment isn’t ready, so I buy bread and mustard and charcuterie that costs 18 dollars back home but here it’s 2 euros, and I finally start Pluribus and go to sleep.
Scott’s experiences and learnings at MIPCOM continue below, but first, the news.
ALZA Festival Is Bringing Vertical Storytelling to the Big Screen
It’s a big week for vertical storytelling! The inaugural ALZA Festival takes over New York City October 16–18, bringing together creators, studios, platforms, and industry leaders for three days of premieres, screenings, panels, and conversations about the future of the format.
And stay tuned! In next week’s Vertical Bloom, we’ll be sharing exclusive insights and takeaways from the festival, including what the conversations happening in New York mean for the future of microdramas.
TikTok and Made By Us Studios Announce Creator-Led Microseries Partnership
At MIPCOM, TikTok announced a new partnership with Made By Us Studios to co-produce premium, creator-led microseries for TikTok and PineDrama. The first two projects are Player, a romantic revenge thriller starring Hannah Stocking, and The Knock, a genre series starring Adam Rose and Zaria Simone. It’s another exciting step for vertical storytelling as major platforms move beyond distributing scripted content and into developing original series with creators at the center.
Fox and Hartbeat Are Turning Microdramas Into a Pipeline for Film and Television
Fox Entertainment and Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat have announced a partnership that will see an initial slate of 25 live-action microseries launch on Holywater’s My Drama platform. Fox will also have a first look at adapting successful titles into traditional film and television projects. It’s an interesting reversal of the usual model. Instead of shrinking traditional entertainment into vertical stories, the companies are using verticals to test new ideas, find audiences, and potentially build something bigger.
New Omdia Research Challenges Assumptions About Who Watches Microdramas
New research from Omdia suggests that the audience for microdramas may be broader than the industry has traditionally assumed. Men account for 54% of microdrama users in the UK and 50% in the US, according to the firm’s April 2026 research. The numbers vary considerably across markets, but the takeaway is exciting: while female audiences have been instrumental in building this industry, there’s enormous potential to reach new viewers through different genres and stories. Vertical is a format, not a genre, and the audience is continuing to prove it.
Postcards from MIPCOM Cannes 2026
Scott spent the week in Cannes for MIPCOM. Here’s what he experienced and learned.
Day 1
Somehow I sleep well and wake up at 8 a.m., which is great because I need to head to the MIPCOM opening CXO summit. David Freeman has helped the brass at MIP gather minds to address the problems of our industry, and actually, we do a halfway decent job of it. My table is talking about verticals. I learn about all kinds of interesting perspectives and ways that vertical is evolving. Shows like Parker’s Pocket creating daily plot points with the audience and companies like RoseBerry repurposing the stories of yesterday for the audiences of today. Aspect ratios are barely a part of it, but then again they are. David reminds me we’ve been watching vertical for a long time, and he’s right. I pitch my steadfast belief that it’s a new medium, and I’m greeted with nothing but optimism and excitement, and that really stuck with me. Watching the CEO of a major YouTube channel and the president of a major media company share a stage in front of all of us stays with me.
I go to the Palais. I like that that’s a sentence I get to type. In many ways, this is better than Cannes Lions imo. The walls are covered in stories and actors. It’s vibrant and alive and thinking about the audience, but I’m also surprised at how many international vendors are bragging about their YouTube presence.
Lots of meetings. People with ideas. The verticurious™️ and people with libraries and stories and digital NY people and digital LA people and digital people of the world, and I care deeply for them. The LA people laugh about how we flew 6,000 miles to have a lunch we could have done on Melrose, but here we are.
Drew Baldwin throws a dinner and I meet new and old friends, and the digital kids aren’t kids anymore, but youth has given way to something more interesting anyway. There’s so much excitement. There’s confidence doing the lambada with uncertainty. I eat the rarest steak of my life, but here it works. I talk politics with an Australian from Queensland. We both agree rodeos can be great.
I walk home. There’s so much projection mapping on the Croisette. A metaphor for technology building upon the past. I watch more Pluribus. I hit the fast-forward-ten-seconds button from time to time. I get it, Vince. But you’re still a genius. I sleep.
Day 2
I don’t sleep well, but it’s fine. I drink a little too much coffee and it’s mostly meetings. Announcements are made in the trades, and I spend time in the Palais heading to booths, talking and learning about all the genius packaging that goes on past the first window. There’s a clear digital presence, and it permeates the old guard, but it’s positive. Change feels good. Necessary.
I got a cold email from an investment bank celebrating an anniversary on a yacht. They want to meet me. I take off my shoes and I walk a red carpet plank, and they give me a flat white, and I talk to a man who helped finance Lord of the Rings. He’s wearing Ray-Bans, and I think it’s a very impressive accomplishment by the Ray-Ban corporation that even among men at this level of success, they’ve got market share.
The British man in the Ray-Bans is generous with experience and smart and listens and genuinely cares about emerging mediums, and I tell him about my journey and the vertical world, and he already knows a lot. It’s a good sign, I think. He agrees the business model hasn’t worked itself out. But he believes it will. We agree there. He implores me to keep focusing on quality. I assure him I will. It’s good to be told something I believe so much by a smart man on a yacht who helped bring Gandalf to the world.
The sun sets, impressive, and I go to a party in a room that is very red, and Evan Shapiro gets on the decks for the first time and DJs. He looks the part, but more importantly, he is the part tonight. I see David again. He deserves mention as a driving social force of this event. I see old and new friends again. We talk business and we talk life as Ra Ra Rasputin plays. The positive energy has a depth to it. Here on the Croisette in the red room, things feel real.
I don’t drink these days, and it’s a big day tomorrow, so I leave and I go to my temporary home and I watch more Pluribus and I sleep eventually.
Day 3
I start the day at a vertical summit, and they have some really interesting facts to share from Omdia. 1 in 12 video users have downloaded a microseries app. YouTube Shorts is a more popular app than Netflix in the US. There’s a growing interest across the vertical video scripted space in all age ranges and genders. There’s nothing micro about any of this. I lead the table. The British woman next to me used to work at the BBC, and she and the Turkish man (also next to me) have so much in common. For them, in Europe, it feels more new. It’s an energy that reminds me of 6 months ago back home. It reminds me that things are evolving towards confidence and the duty and the weight that comes with certainty of something worth pursuing.
Right after the panel, I drink too much coffee again, and then I’m in the grand auditorium. I watch Anatolii Kasianov from Holywater with Tanya Cohen from Made By Us and Sammie Hao from ReelShort and moderator Scott Roxborough from The Hollywood Reporter share the same stage that Francis Ford Coppola received the Palme d’Or on. Hallowed ground. The room isn’t packed, but it’s whatever two degrees before packed is. There’s a lot of people. ReelShort plays a trailer. No applause. There’s still a creative tension. But it’s still a packed room. The hard work of passionate people will break that tension. It’s an inspiring moment.
I have coffee with Anatolii. I ask him about the future. There’s a lot of change coming. Good change if it works out. More on that another day.
Miles of meetings. The final sprint. More minds this space needs. Production isn’t going away, but it’s going to change. But then again, the language of story always does. I’m stubborn and I’m ready to change all at once, and I know I’m not the only one. I’m tired and wired, and then it’s time for my panel. Dawn Yang and Sandra Ouaiss and Tanya again and me, and they announce their partnership. I talk about our projects with Eli Roth and Alfred Street. More on those soon too. We all have news. Excitement. I like to think the world of digital scripted storytelling got a few more converts that hour on the Atlantic coast. I share my faith that all roads will lead to YouTube and TikTok and Meta. Where risk is often rewarded and formats are truly realized before they are torn down and reborn anew.
I have one more meeting with an Irishman who majored in North Indian sitar and teaches me about ragas. He’s pivoted since. We also have a reason to talk business, but the raga is what sticks with me. A meditation on theme that explodes into beautiful energy. And it’s passed down through generations, and you can track your teachers back 2,000 years to when the goddess Saraswati gave music to humanity. I once learned screenwriting from the man who wrote Top Gun. Storytelling really is an oral tradition.
I have one more dinner. A final meetup of legacy and digital. People barely talk business. Our batteries are drained, but only so they can be charged again. Some have early flights. There’s a real sense of camaraderie. We were all just part of a small yet important step on the infinite journey towards the future.
I go home. I finish Pluribus. I want season 2. I want a faster season 2. Vince should watch a vertical. Vince should never change. I go to sleep.
Day 4
I wake up. I go to Nice. It’s still nice. I fly to Rome. I get in a cab. I call a friend and a colleague because in this industry those lines bleed.
“I hope you take this the right way. It sounds like you’ve got the post-conference glow.”
I take it the right way. Nobody has ever told me that. It really feels like something happened this week. But not just to me. Around me. I hope it happened for a lot of people.
The winds of change follow me to Rome, and my friendly cab driver is yelling with their hands at some other driver in Italian, and pinched fingers fly around this Fiat, and there’s an electric tomorrow ahead, but tonight I sleep and I dream of home and the things that really make it a home and a life and how I can put it all into the next story we tell with the people we tell them with, and tell them for, and the people who help us share those stories with the world that is so very, very worth it.
I crave meaning. I crave pizza.
En Avant.
That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.
We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.
We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.
See you then.
Editor: Scott Brown
Writer: Franziska Harms