5X Media’s Alon Shtruzman and Scott Einbinder have launched New Short Media, a vertical storytelling studio backed by what the pair describe as a consortium of investors. As reported by Deadline, the new venture will operate alongside 5X but as a separate company, and aims to bring “brand-name content creators, actors and creative talent” into microdrama production.

New Short enters a vertical video field that has filled quickly over the past year, joining players including RoseBerry Media’s Epis, Jason Strickman and Kumbáli Satori’s HighFive, and Kelly Luegenbiehl, Jon Koa and Onur Güvenatam’s Shorties Studios.

The studio has three projects in early development. “Speeding Towards You” is described as a “Mr. and Mrs. Smith-style action romance thriller” about two competing car thieves drawn into a covert operation against a crime syndicate, with writer Russell Rothberg attached. “One Foot in Hollywood” will star influencer Alex Sparrow in what New Short calls a “Guy Ritchie-esque action comedy” about influencers who cross a cartel and must produce a film with the boss’s daughter to survive, and is billed as featuring “real-life influencers in impossible situations.” “Polyamour Mon Amour” is a dating reality series following an unnamed celebrity couple who open their relationship to a third partner.

Notably, New Short does not plan to build its own distribution platform. Instead, the studio intends to develop IP for existing platforms that can later extend into longer-form television, film, games, and consumer products. That choice puts New Short on the production side of a market where a small number of apps, ReelShort and DramaBox chief among them, control both commissioning budgets and the feed placement that determines whether a series finds an audience.

Shtruzman, the founding CEO of Keshet International and a producer on La Brea and Our Boys, said the format still leans heavily on a narrow set of story types. “Vertical storytelling is evolving incredibly fast, but much of the market still revolves around the same types of romance stories,” he said in a statement. “We see an opportunity to bring broader genres, premium production values and recognizable talent into the space while harnessing the enormous reach of today’s Creator Economy.”

Einbinder, New Short’s other co-founder and 5X’s Executive Chairman, framed the studio’s ambitions in similar terms. “Hollywood is discovering that vertical isn’t simply another distribution format; it’s becoming an entirely new storytelling medium,” he stated, adding that the studio is “creating projects designed to break through culturally, commercially and move beyond posts and clips into character-driven worlds that can live across multiple formats.”

Einbinder launched 5X in 2023 as a management and production business. Shtruzman and Gil Goldschein joined as partners the following year and became co-CEOs; Einbinder is now 5X’s Executive Chairman. Goldschein departed last year to pursue other projects. New Short’s launch coincides with a separate microdrama studio launch from producers Jeffrey Schenck, Barry Barnholtz and Peter Sullivan, who are debuting VertTV the same day.

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