Google Pixel co-financed Moving On, a fourteen-episode vertical live-action series produced by Unwell, the production company of podcaster Alex Cooper. The series launched on YouTube in June, The Wrap reported. The brand thus paid for the development of its own entertainment title and entered it as an early-stage investor.
Producer Colin McRae described this step on LinkedIn as part of a broader shift. He says that the development of film and television increasingly happens in public, before a studio gets involved.
For decades development followed a clear sequence. Studios and networks financed projects, executives decided what moved forward, and the audience saw only the finished result. McRae describes a different chain. A creator shoots the first series alone, a brand pays an early bet, the audience validates it on social media, and only once it has found viewers does a studio or streamer arrive to package, distribute and scale it.
Instagram fills with creators’ scripted series
The comedy series Friend Material was shot by director Michael Doneger and writer Aaron Karo on a DJI Pocket 3 camera, with episodes of two to three minutes and scripts of up to four pages. Nobody on the team was paid, and the money went on sound mixing and colour grading, No Film School reports. The series runs on Instagram, and Karo is planning a follow-up. “The next season will hopefully either be sponsored or be on traditional television, so we will have a much bigger budget to work with,” he told No Film School.
Similar shows are multiplying. Screenwriter and producer Jon Stahl tracks more than twenty vertical scripted comedies and told The Ankler that “the space is accelerating rapidly”. The Ankler article by journalist Natalie Jarvey, published on 22 July, frames Instagram as a faster route for scripted content than YouTube. People from major companies are also entering the genre. Former Amazon manager Joe Lewis is financing his own scripted series for social media.
Brands fund entertainment instead of campaigns
For McRae, brand-funded entertainment is an entry requirement, not an add-on. Campaigns built to disappear once the media is bought are harder to justify when audiences spend time with creators, podcasts and series. Brands therefore, in his view, are starting to invest in IP, repeatable formats and entertainment titles that can build an audience over time, and, if they succeed, to grow further through partners such as Netflix, Amazon or YouTube. Funding the Moving On series is a concrete example.
Platforms build their own scripted programmes
TikTok is pushing its own role beyond short videos. In June, together with the Sundance Institute, it announced a four-week screenwriting programme for vertical micro-series of 60 to 120 seconds. “TikTok has become a home for serialized storytelling, where original micro-series find audiences faster,” said Dawn Yang, who leads entertainment partnerships at TikTok. The platform is also going after its own content. The micro-series Screen Time, created by Issy Rae with production company HOORAE, gathered 75 million views in its first week.
Europe’s market regroups around the same model
Mipcom Cannes, the main European market for television content, is integrating vertical storytelling, microdrama and creator-led business directly into its programme from 12 to 15 October this year, as VideoAge announced. “What were emerging trends only a year ago, from vertical storytelling and creator-led businesses to AI-powered production, are now attracting investment, generating scalable business models,” said Mipcom director Lucy Smith.
McRae draws a larger role for the producer from this. Someone, in his view, must connect the parts, develop the format, assemble the financing and turn a single story into a title that lives across social media, streaming, licensing, products and live events.
Entertainment used to be approved behind closed doors. According to McRae, it is increasingly being developed in public. For European brands and creators who until now bought campaigns or filmed for other people’s platforms, this creates a development path that the market is starting to treat as the default.
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