Disney and TikTok have announced a content-sharing partnership that will allow creators on the platform to produce short-form videos using scenes and moments from the studio’s library of films and television shows, with that content then becoming available on Disney+ through a new vertical video feature.
The companies described the agreement, announced Aug. 5, as a first-of-its-kind deal. The program will launch in the United States within the next few months before expanding to international markets.
Under the arrangement, TikTok creators will be able to select from the studio’s collection and build short videos around them. Those videos will live on TikTok and simultaneously appear on Disney+ through a feature called Verts, a mobile vertical video format similar to the scroll-and-swipe interfaces found on other social media apps. The content will draw from across the studio’s portfolio, including films and series from Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, FX and other brands.
What each company gets out of it
For TikTok, the deal provides access to some of the most recognizable intellectual property in entertainment, giving creators premium licensed material rather than the legally murky terrain of using copyrighted content without permission. A formal licensing arrangement turns a copyright enforcement headache into a controlled partnership.
For the studio, the arrangement creates a channel for distributing its content to audiences who might not otherwise be browsing Disney+ and who are deeply embedded in the platform’s creator ecosystem. The generation of fans who grew up watching Pixar films and who are now creating content on social platforms represent a natural bridge audience, and a deal that puts content in front of them in a format they are already consuming fits the company’s broader strategy of finding its audiences wherever they spend their time.
The streaming service’s new Verts feature is notable as a product development signal. Adding a vertical video swipe format to a subscription streaming app is an acknowledgment that the behavior patterns established by TikTok have become standard enough that a premium service needs to accommodate them. Whether Verts becomes a significant part of user engagement depends on whether the company can populate it with content that works in the format.
The broader context of platform deals
The Disney-TikTok agreement arrives at a moment when the short-form video landscape has been defined largely by the question of how legacy entertainment companies and user-generated content platforms can coexist. For most of the past decade, studios viewed short-form video platforms with a mix of enthusiasm for the promotional value and anxiety about unauthorized use of protected content.
Formal licensing deals of the kind announced Tuesday represent an evolution in that relationship, giving creators clarity about what they can use and giving studios a degree of control and revenue participation that informal use never provided. The Disney deal is described as a first of its kind, which suggests both that no major studio had previously struck a comparable arrangement with TikTok and that the studio sees this as a model that could be replicated or expanded.
TikTok has itself been operating in a complex regulatory environment in the United States, with ongoing uncertainty about its legal standing under laws related to its Chinese ownership. Securing a high-profile partnership with one of the world’s most prominent entertainment companies provides some measure of commercial reinforcement during a period when the platform’s future has been debated in Washington.
What it means for creators and fans
Creators who have already been building audiences around studio content, sometimes under legally uncertain circumstances, will have a cleaner framework for doing so. Access to official clips and scenes will improve production quality and remove the legal exposure that came with using them informally.
Fans on both Disney+ and TikTok will gain a new category of content that blends the creativity of the creator ecosystem with the recognized characters and storytelling of the Disney catalog.
