Fox Entertainment & Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Strike Microdrama Deal — SkimNews
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- Fox Entertainment and Hartbeat struck a deal granting Fox Entertainment Studios first-look rights to feature film and television series projects developed from vertical series released under three Hartbeat brands (Codeblack, Essence, and Revolt), with Fox Entertainment Global handling worldwide distribution after the initial run.
- The pipeline launches with 25 live-action titles spanning thriller, drama, and faith-based storytelling, hosted on My Drama — a microdrama platform run by Holywater Tech, in which Fox invested last year.
- Codeblack will become the first dedicated branded channel on My Drama, per a statement from Codeblack founder Jeff Clanagan calling the three-brand partnership a realization of his vision to bring 'the biggest cultural brands serving our audience together.'
- Fox and Hartbeat cited a combined social following exceeding 20 million across Codeblack, Essence, and Revolt, framing the brands as the 'first stage of intellectual property development' for the vertical-to-traditional pipeline.
- Hartbeat quietly struck a similar microdrama partnership with platform aTwist just last month — a near-identical arrangement that complicates the 'first look' framing Fox announced at MIPCOM.
- Fox Entertainment Studios Head of Scripted Hannah Pillemer framed the vertical series as a real-time testing ground, saying the partnership lets them 'identify bold ideas in the vertical space, see what resonates in real time, and give those stories a path to grow into film and television.'
Why it matters: Fox is using short-form vertical video as a low-cost development pipeline to source traditional film and TV properties — and by tying it to Hartbeat's three culture-focused brands with a 20-million-plus social following, it gains built-in audience testing before committing to bigger budgets. The strategy depends on identifying hits cheaply: vertical series can be produced fast, and only the ones that resonate graduate to feature or series treatment.
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