Disney is hoping its deal with OpenAI’s Sora will increase engagement on Disney+. CEO Bob Iger explained the partnership in more depth during the company’s first quarter earnings call for 2026 on Monday.
The three-year licensing deal enables people to prompt Sora to create 30-second videos of around 250 Disney characters. Characters that have a human voice or face will not be part of the offerings.
“It jumpstarts our ability to have shortform video on Disney+,” Iger said. “Additionally, it’s our hope that we will use the Sora tools to enable subscribers of Disney+ to create shortform videos on our platform.”
Iger believes the feature will “greatly enhance engagement” and noted he did not think it will have an impact on the viewership of other programming. At the moment, the company is only focused on videos that are 30 seconds or shorter.
Disney doesn’t have a specific timeframe for when its Sora functionality will roll out on Disney+. The company is still working through the technical details of the feature. “I imagine it’ll be sometime in fiscal 2026,” Iger said.
The upcoming feature is similar to one that exists on the ESPN streaming service, which lets users upload shortform videos they’ve created. Iger gave no indication about whether this offering was performing well on the platform. However, the CEO did list the rise of shortform and user-generated content on platforms like YouTube as a reason for going in this direction.
ESPN and Disney+ won’t be the only streaming services offering shortform content. Peacock has used its in-app shortform videos to promote its originals and offer fans behind-the-scenes content. Netflix will also be incorporating shortform videos onto its app in 2026 in an effort to increase discoverability.
