Tubi and TikTok name 12 creators for incubator that will produce 10 long-form series

Tubi and TikTok have named the 12 creators in their first Creatorverse Incubator cohort. Together the creators will make 10 new series, scripted and unscripted, that will stream only on Tubi. The two companies announced the cohort on October 27 in a press release on Tubi's corporate site. Tubi called the program its largest investment so far in original programming with creators.

The incubator was first announced in March as a way for TikTok creators to develop long-form shows for Tubi, Fox Corporation's free, ad-supported streaming service. Tubi says it has 110 million monthly active users.

The slate

The shows cover a range of genres. Horror creator Christopher Kiely will host Would You Survive?, which asks whether an ordinary person could survive famous horror films, monsters and locations. Film expert Allie Tran will visit real-world horror filming locations in Scare Tours. Kai Cameron hosts a dating show, Kai Picks the Guy, and Sabrina Brier hosts Asking for a Friend, a comedy featuring celebrity guests.

Animation makes up a large part of the slate. It includes Lynnell Jones Jr.'s Feeling Super, about a broke young man who gains a new superpower each day; Kendria Bland's The Roach Chronicles; and Sebastian Krahl's adult animated Jamie Crow. The rest of the slate includes Madison Humphrey's workplace comedy The Leasing Manager, Marc Sebastian's Australian travel series, and Never Have I Spent the Winter with the Romano Brothers, a teen comedy starring Yasmine Sahid.

In the release, Kudzi Chikumbu, Tubi's vice president of creator partnerships, said the company's role is to give creators creative freedom as they make their first TV shows. TikTok's Dawn Yang said the partnership offers creators another way to reach new audiences.

Context

The incubator is part of a broader creator push at Tubi. The company says that since launching Tubi for Creators in June 2025, it has added more than 35,000 episodes from over 700 creators. It has also brought its Creatorverse offering to Fire TV and launched a Creatorverse Hub where viewers can browse creator films and series.

Our analysis

Free ad-supported streaming services have a constant need for content, and creators offer a supply that is cheap compared with studio programming and comes with an audience built in. For Tubi, buying shows from creators with existing followings is a way to bring those followers to a TV screen. For TikTok, the deal is a way to keep its creators in its orbit as they move into longer formats, instead of losing them to YouTube.

For creators, the attraction is credibility and a new screen. A Tubi original is a TV credit, and TV credits help with future deals, agency representation and brand rates. The release did not say who owns the rights, how much the production budgets are, or whether creators share in advertising revenue. Those terms will decide whether this is a breakthrough or a showcase.

For brands, creator series on a free streaming service are a new kind of inventory: connected-TV ads next to talent whose audiences brands already know from social media. Media buyers who have struggled to measure social creator spend may find TV-style buying easier to approve.

For agencies and managers, the cohort is another sign that development work, not just deal negotiation, is becoming core to the job. The same week TikTok named a second production partner, MADE BY US STUDIOS, for creator-led micro-series, according to TikTok's newsroom.

For competitors, the pressure is on YouTube, which already dominates creator viewing on living-room TVs, and on Instagram. Instagram this month began testing 90-minute horizontal videos and has said it plans to bring those formats to its TV app, according to Tubefilter. The number of buyers for creator long-form content is growing, which helps creators negotiate.

The genre mix is also revealing. Horror, animation, dating and friendship comedy are formats where creators already have tested audiences and where production costs can be kept low. Several of the shows, such as Would You Survive? and Scare Tours, are clear extensions of the creators' existing social content. That lowers the risk for Tubi, but it also means the slate is testing whether existing fans will follow creators to TV, not whether creators can win over new viewers.

The scale is still modest. Ten series against Tubi's library of more than 375,000 titles is a small slate. The program's success will depend on whether Tubi promotes the shows and reports how they perform.

For TikTok, the deal sits alongside its own scripted slate. Dawn Yang, who leads entertainment and micro-series at TikTok, is quoted in both this release and the MADE BY US STUDIOS announcement, which shows TikTok treating partnerships with other platforms and its own productions as parts of a single strategy.

The take

Editors' opinion: The incubator is a good idea at a small scale, and Tubi's earlier creator push suggests it is serious. But "largest investment yet" means little without a dollar figure, and creators should be wary of incubators that trade TV exposure for rights. If Tubi wants this to be a real pipeline, it should publish viewing numbers for the cohort and make clear that creators keep ownership of their formats.