EXCLUSIVE: Birdman co-writer Armando Bo has teamed with tech investor Ariel Arrieta and Latin American streaming pioneer Tomás Escobar to create what the trio say is Latin America’s first vertical series platform.
The launch of Shorta is arguably the most significant microdrama move in Latin America, as the vertical video craze continues to spread around the world. The app has launched on iOS and Andriod app stores, with a plan to surpass 500 original productions by December 2027. A host of Latin American creatives are attached to provide content, and numerous investors are backing its creation.
The app debuts with more than 40 series in genres such as horror, sci-fi, comedy, thriller and romance, a nod to Shorta’s approach to expanding vertical video production beyond the melodrama-heavy stories that currently define the medium.
Creators working with Shorta include El Marginal showrunner Alejandro Ciancio; Argentine actor and content creators Jero Freixas and Julieta Coria; Balthazar Murillo, star of Netflix biopic series La Vide de Carlos Tevez; Amor Animal lead actress Tatiana Glikman; Argentine director, writer, and showrunner Ariana Saiegh; singer and Soy Luna actress Malena Ratner; and Cromañón star El Purre (José Giménez Zapiola).
Ciancio has already produced three series for Shorta: Verdad o Shot, Debt and another currently untitled show, while Saiegh, who is known for the likes of Berlinale Series Market selection Familia de Diván, Disney+’s Entre Paredes and Star+ Brazil show Dos Tiempos, has already made Independencia for the vertical vid app.
Shorta’s founders share a conviction that Hispanic audiences “deserve a home for original, quality vertical fiction — and no one has built it yet.” The app is working to a profit-sharing model that the founders say means creators can grow alongside the platform. In that sense, their plan is closer to a YouTube and Spotify model rather than a traditional TV or film deal.
Long-time Alejandro G. Inárritu collaborator Bo is known as co-writer of Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. He also created and was showrunner on Prime Video’s 2022 series El Presidente (The President) and was an exec producer on Cromañón, another series for the streamer. He is the founder of sister production houses Rebolución and About Entertainment, with the former a respected advertising producer and the latter a co-producer on El Presidente alongside Gaumont, Fabula and Kapow.
Escobar is the co-founder of early Latin American streaming service Cuevana, which ran between 2009 and 2014, and created online education platform Acamica. Arrieta is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, known as the founder of Digital Ventures, which was acquired by Fox in 2007, and Managing Partner of NXTP Ventures, which backs tech companies in Latin America.
Of the three, Bo brings the creative vision, Escobár the tech and streaming know-how and Arrieta the operational and investment eye.
“Shorta is where cinematic language meets the pulse of the internet — a more open, more permeable model where more voices create more stories, and new ways of telling them,” said Bo.
“It’s a space where actors, directors and creators become showrunners, generating their own series and redefining the scale of fiction. A new engine that discovers talent and creates opportunities for those who want to tell stories but haven’t had the access — until now.”
Further investors in the platform comprise Mariano Mayer from Newtopia VC, Rebeca Hwang (Kalei Ventures), Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Martín Varsavsky (Myelin VC), Matías Woloski (Auth0), Emiliano Kargieman (Satellogic), Patricio Jutard (Mural), Hernán Fernández (Angel Ventures Mexico), Eric Acher (Monashees), Marta Cruz (NXTP), Pablo Garfinkel (Tokai Ventures), Rogelio de los Santos (Dalus Capital), Ignacio Plaza (Draper Cygnus), Tomas Braun (Proximity Angels), and Gabriel Martino (BFLinvest) among others.
