Disney and TikTok have agreed a content-sharing deal that will allow creators to use clips from Disney films and television programmes in their videos, the two companies announced on Wednesday.
The agreement covers Disney’s subsidiaries, meaning clips from franchises including Star Wars, Toy Story and the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be available to TikTok creators. Videos made under the scheme will also be shared on Verts, Disney’s short-form video platform.
The programme will pilot in the United States before being rolled out to other countries. According to the companies’ joint announcement, creators who opt in will gain access to assets from hundreds of films and series in Disney’s library. Neither company disclosed the financial terms.
The deal follows the collapse of a $1bn (£745m) agreement between Disney and OpenAI that would have allowed people to use the studio’s characters in AI-generated videos. That arrangement was cancelled in March when OpenAI shut down its AI video generation tool Sora, citing a decision to focus on other parts of its business.
“Today, fans are celebrating our stories in entirely new ways,” said Asad Ayaz, Disney’s chief marketing and brand officer, following the announcement.
“Creators are at the heart of everything we do at TikTok,” said Dawn Yang, TikTok’s global head of entertainment. “Their creativity extends the life of films and shows into conversations that fans discover and share.”
TikTok said its platform saw an average of 6.5 million posts relating to film and TV per day last year. Fans frequently use clips from films and television shows in their videos, but without express permission these are often taken down following copyright claims, making it harder for a wide audience to engage with fan-created content around a big release.
“Disney owns some of the world’s biggest franchises but ownership of attention is shifting towards creators,” social media expert Matt Navarra told BBC News. “Hollywood used to market at fans – now it needs to give fans the raw materials to market with it, and that is quite a profound shift.”
Navarra said TikTok would also benefit from the “credibility of becoming a formal distribution partner to one of Hollywood’s biggest studios”. He added that TikTok’s recommendation algorithm gives it the power to “influence which character or scene or forgotten franchise suddenly becomes very valuable again”.
The two companies said a jointly run programme, the Disney Creator Ambassador Program, would boost some creators’ videos and give them increased visibility, access to exclusive events and career development pathways.
Gareth Sutcliffe of Enders Analysis said: “This is a deal that repositions and recovers Disney in the UGC [user-generated content] space following the content gap left by the sudden collapse of Sora.”
He said the deal was not without risk. “There is an ongoing safety debate around TikTok under European online rules,” he said. “At a minimum, Disney will need to employ significant guardrails to curate the creator content that is selected.”
Online creators and influencers are becoming more important to brands’ marketing strategies. Last year, a report from Oxford Economics said YouTube content creators contributed £2.2bn to the UK economy in 2024 and supported 45,000 jobs.
Disney launched Verts in the US in March, with plans to expand the platform to other countries.
