Last week, HBO began testing HBO Max Shorts with select iOS users in the US—a TikTok-style vertical feed with its own dedicated tab. It comes with its own icon. Tap it, and you get a full-screen scrollable feed from the HBO Max library. Around the same time, closer to home, Red Chillies Entertainment announced Shoonya, its foray into vertical video storytelling. Yash Raj Films has also parked a chunk of its money in Rusk Media for a vertical entertainment push. Netflix, Disney+ and Peacock all got there earlier.
Their only bet is a generation conditioned to discover entertainment by scrolling, not searching. It’s simple: if people already spend hours consuming vertical video, the next evolution is to make premium entertainment fit that habit.
So, if every major entertainment company is optimising for the scroll, is anyone still betting on the theatre? And the irony is, a small but growing group of consumers, especially in affluent circles, is embracing dumb phones and digital minimalism. Offline is the new status symbol. Where do you sit?
