Snips Strikes First Major Deals to Shrink Banijay and BIG Media Shows Into Minute-Long Vertical Episodes

A Tel Aviv startup called Snips has signed its first major content deals, securing the rights to chop full-length television series and films from Banijay Rights and BIG Media into bite-sized vertical episodes designed for phones.

Each episode lasts between 45 seconds and two minutes and ends on a cliffhanger. Snips uses its own AI system, branded the "AI Film Director," to edit a single title into roughly 60 micro-episodes. The company already has more than 250 titles available and plans to produce dozens of microseries per week, aiming for thousands per year, according to Variety.

The titles lined up for the vertical treatment include familiar names from both catalogues: Big Brother, MasterChef, The Fall, Flowers, Gracepoint, Gunpowder, Humans, Merlin and Two Weeks to Live. Banijay Rights is the global distribution arm of Banijay Entertainment, the super-producer behind Big Brother and MasterChef. BIG Media is an unscripted producer whose credits include Inside the CIA: Secrets & Spies and Truthseekers.

The deal structure keeps the original studios in control. Banijay and BIG Media retain ownership of their intellectual property, while Snips shares revenue from its vertical platform with those distribution partners. Snips co-founder and CEO Or Ben Shimon has positioned the company as a pure adaptor rather than a competitor: the startup deliberately does not create its own content, reasoning that producing originals would put it in competition with the studios whose catalogues it depends on.

Banijay Rights' digital VP Shaun Keeble and BIG Media president and co-founder Danny Wilk are the executives behind the agreements on the partner side.

Vertical microdrama is not a new idea for Banijay in particular. The company has been moving into the format across several territories this year. Banijay Productions Germany announced an untitled microdrama project — 28 episodes with a cast of eight well-known German creators — in a March 2026 blog post, while Banijay Finland and Finnish public broadcaster Yle unveiled a vertical short-form mockumentary called Survival Sisters around the same time. Banijay's Endemol Shine Brasil had already completed an 89-episode microdrama, as reported by Episode Magazine in March. Another company, RoseBerry, launched a microdrama app called "epis" in July after securing its own Banijay Rights agreement to adapt long-form shows into vertical video, per StreamTV Insider.

In the UK, Spirit Studios and Night Train Media have a micro-drama series in funded development as of October 2025, according to Deadline.

What makes the Snips deal stand out is the scale of the editing ambition. Rather than commissioning new micro-series one at a time, the startup is applying AI to existing, fully produced catalogues and slicing each title into dozens of instalments — a high-volume approach that treats finished shows as raw material for a different kind of screen.

For viewers, the promise is familiar stories in a format that fits between scrolling and the next notification. For the rights holders, it is a new window for properties that may already have run their course on traditional television or streaming.