Nobody wants this: Netflix and Disney+ eyeing vertical videos

Everywhere I look, I see people with their heads bent over their phones, scrolling through one vertical video after another. They are in cafes, on the subway, at my house, even right next to me in bed. Scroll, scroll, scroll.

Now, vertical videos are moving out of the TikTok, Instagram and Facebook apps and into the living room. YouTube shorts on the big screen have of course been around for a while, but now long-format video streamers are also interested in vertical videos.

Earlier this month, Disney said it wanted to roll out vertical videos on Disney+, and now Netflix says it’s also taking “greens” seriously.

For its part, Disney says “everything is on the table” when it comes to vertical videos, and that it’s essentially a play for everything that makes Disney+ a “must-have everyday destination.”

Netflix, meanwhile, is mulling vertical videos as part of a broader overhaul of its mobile app interface, with Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters saying vertical shorts could be the ideal path for “more clips based on new types of content, like video podcasts.”

Listen, I understand. As much as I complain about vertical videos, I’m not immune to their addictive nature. Put me in front of a TikTok feed and I’ll dive into it like a flock of pigeons attacking a bagel.

And, to be clear, I’m really cool with the idea of ​​”greens” on Disney+ and Netflix. mobile apps, whether podcasts (a market Netflix is ​​getting into) or teasers for current and upcoming TV shows and movies.

Netflix has long tinkered with vertical teasers on its mobile app, and it’s a decent experience for finding something to stream — hell, it’s better than endlessly scrolling through rows of overly familiar shows on the Netflix TV app.

What I don’t do it just like the idea of ​​vertical short films making their way onto the biggest screens in our homes. For me, there’s something uniquely mobile about shorts: they’re small, intimate, brief, instantly forgotten and best consumed in private, like when you sneak one Lays crisp after another. Watching them on an 80-inch OLED seems, well, fake.

If the news of long-form streamers launching into verticals sounds familiar, you might be thinking of Quibi, the short-form video company backed by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman that launched in 2020 and imploded in just six months, burning down about $1.7 billion in equity in the process.

Quibi’s goal was to create dramatic vertical short films that mobile viewers would pay for. But no one wanted them, and although Roku later took over Quibi’s library (renaming the shorts “Roku Originals” in landscape format), it quietly removed the videos in 2023.

Personally, I also don’t think anyone wants big-screen vertical videos from Disney+, Netflix, HBO Max, or any of the other major long-form video streamers.

Or at least, I I don’t want it.