According to Nielsen’s 2025 Diverse Intelligence Series report, U.S. Hispanics represent more than $4.1 trillion in purchasing power, while streaming accounts for 55.8% of their total television viewing time, compared with 46% for the overall U.S. population.

The vertical-drama boom is not simply another media trend for Manny Ruiz (Minivela/Co-Founder/Brilla Media); it is the latest chapter in a career that has revolved around storytelling and the Latino audience.

“I’ve been a storyteller in one shape, or form since the late ‘80s,” Ruiz told me in a recent interview. His career began as a journalist and crime reporter for The Miami Herald, followed by years in Hispanic public relations and media. He later founded Hispanic PR Wire and went on to build Hispanicize, a platform that became an important part of the U.S. Latino influencer and social-media industry. Today, he sees Minivela as the next evolution of that work.

Ruiz describes Minivela as the first bilingual vertical-shorts platform built specifically for the U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets. The company was launched in 2025 by Brilla Media, the Latino media company Ruiz co-founded with his wife, Angela Sustaita-Ruiz, in partnership with actor and producer Carlos Ponce and adtech company Numatec.

The choice of partners is telling. Ponce brings decades of experience in television, film and, particularly, the world of Latin entertainment, while Ruiz brings a career spent building connections between Latino audiences, media and brands. Together, they are approaching the vertical format not simply as a new way to watch content, but as an opportunity to create a new space for Latino stories and creators. “Our approach is different,” Ruiz told me. “We are really [about] community and for the Hispanic market and even broadly Latin America.”

His goal, he explained, is to go “upward”: to retain the structures of the stories people want to watch without following what he sees as the industry’s increasing move toward more adult-oriented material.

For Ruiz, that also means creating an industry in which Latino writers, directors, producers, and actors have more opportunities to participate. When Minivela launched, the company described its mission as opening additional production opportunities for Latino creative talent, from directors and writers to actors and influencers.

That mission is already beginning to extend beyond Minivela’s own productions. In 2026, Great American Media’s Pure Flix partnered with Minivela on a multi-project agreement to develop and distribute a slate of microdramas for U.S. Hispanic and Latin American audiences, including original stories and adaptations from Pure Flix’s existing library. The projects are being developed for vertical viewing and for bilingual, Spanish-language and culturally specific audiences.

“Great American Pure Flix is the leading faith-and-family streaming service, and Pure Flix Familia will build on that foundation with programming and experiences created specifically for Latino families,” said Bill Abbott, President and CEO of Great American Media.

During Hispanic Heritage Month this past October 2026, Great American Media announced the expansion of their investment into Latino entertainment by launching Pure Flix Famila, a new streaming destination created for families seeking culturally relevant entertainment rooted in faith, family and shared values. 

Pure Flix Familia launched with the distribution of an original microdrama Alquilé Un Novio Para Navidad and a national call for Latino-produced family and faith films. The plan is to start with Spanish-language entertainment with the goal of expanding to include English-language, and bilingual storytelling created and curated for Latino audiences.

However, perhaps the clearest example of what Minivela is doing in the Latino vertical-drama content creation space is Rico’s Tacos.

Rico’s Tacos: From Telenovela to the Supermarket Aisle

Rico’s Tacos is a 22-episode vertical microdrama set in a Southern California neighborhood near Venice Beach. Produced by Minivela, the story follows a widowed father, his teenage daughter, and their abuela as they build a family taco business while navigating identity, resilience and family legacy. Each episode is less than three minutes, making the series deliberately suited for mobile viewing (Digiday, 2026).

Rico’s Tacos is also an experiment in something much bigger: What happens when a brand stops simply advertising around entertainment and starts helping create the entertainment itself. The project was developed through a collaboration between Procter & Gamble and Albertsons Media Collective, with shopper and cultural insights from Albertsons and P&G informing the story from the beginning. Rather than adding an advertisement to a finished production, the partners used information about how consumers shop to help shape the narrative (Albertsons Media Collective, 2026).

In one episode, for example, the family’s abuela goes to Albertsons to buy avocados and realizes that she also needs Head & Shoulders shampoo. It is a small moment, but it illustrates the premise—an ordinary shopping trip becomes part of the story rather than an interruption to it (The Wall Street Journal, 2026).

The series is distributed across Albertsons’ YouTube, social and in-store platforms, with short teasers and QR codes directing shoppers to the full episodes. The retailer has also been using its stores as part of the production and distribution environment (Albertsons Media Collective, 2026).

Albertsons executives have even referred internally to the concept as “soap opera 2.0”—a contemporary version of serialized entertainment that can live on social media, mobile devices and, in this case, inside the supermarket itself (Digiday, 2026).

For Minivela, however, Rico’s Tacos represents more than an innovative advertising experiment. It is a demonstration of what Latino storytelling can look like when the audience is considered from the beginning; not as a niche to be targeted later, but as the community for whom the story is being created.

When I spoke with Ruiz in Los Angeles this past summer, during the run of the Chicano Hollywood Film Festival, he was already looking beyond Rico’s Tacos. He was in L.A. not only to celebrate the project but also to continue building Minivela’s relationship with Pure Flix Familia and to meet with filmmakers and other creators. And perhaps that is the most promising part of this new format. Vertical drama is still young enough that its future has not been decided. The technology may have created the format, and the algorithms may have accelerated it, but there is still room for creators to decide what stories belong inside that little rectangle we carry everywhere.

For Latino storytellers, that could mean something bigger than simply finding a new place to watch a telenovela. It could mean helping shape what the next generation of television and marketing looks like and making sure our stories are there from the beginning.

A Billion-Dollar Industry

While artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to create some of this content, much of the vertical-drama industry still relies on real actors, writers, directors, and production teams. The content is hosted on independent streaming platforms and apps that are growing at an astonishing pace. 

There are now hundreds of dedicated short and vertical-drama apps worldwide, with platforms such as ReelShort, DramaBox, and GoodShort among the most recognizable names in the international market.

Sensor Tower estimates that short-drama apps generated approximately $700 million in global in-app revenue in the first quarter of 2025 alone, nearly four times the revenue generated in the same quarter a year earlier. The apps also surpassed 370 million downloads globally during those three months. By March 2025, cumulative global in-app revenue had reached approximately $2.3 billion (Sensor Tower, 2025). And the audience is no longer small enough to dismiss as a social-media curiosity.

According to Omdia, approximately 66 million people in the United States were monthly microdrama viewers in 2025, up dramatically from 26 million the previous year (Reuters, 2026). The numbers suggest that vertical drama is becoming less of a social-media phenomenon and more of a new form of television.

And this may only be the beginning.

The post Manny Ruiz: At The Helm of the Minivela Evolution first appeared on .

Same Opening Weekend, Different Results 

By Andrea Nunez-Gamboa

In a rare occurrence, two Latino-themed films—Clika and The Dreamer Cinderella—competed at the box office this past January 23. The films simultaneous release offers a revealing look at how marketing strategies that address similar markets operate at opposite ends of the industry spectrum, namely studio-backed campaigns with substantial resources versus the limited marketing budget of independent films.

It is well documented that U.S. Latinos are the most avid moviegoers in the U.S. This matters not only because the film industry is experiencing sustained declines in movie attendance—limiting the discovery of new films and talent—but also because Latino audiences represent untapped economic potential.

A 2023 McKinsey’s research study found that the US film industry might generate an additional $12 to $18 billion annually if Latino cultural representation in films increased,. 

Latinos account for roughly 30% of the U.S. economy with a collective GDP that would rank as the fifth largest in the world, according to The Latino Donor Collaborative, a think tank that produces yearly studies on the filmgoing habits of U.S.Latinos  The disconnect between economic power and the industry’s representation of Latinos raises a persistent question: Why does Latino visibility in U.S. films remain so limited?

It is a complicated answer that includes the lack of studio greenlighting for Latino projects, smaller budgets, and limited marketing support. As a result, many Latino filmmakers turn to the independent route, where little to no funding is allocated to marketing. By the numbers, the disparity is striking: The ratio between a studio film’s marketing budget and an independent film’s is approximately 87 to 1.   

Sol Trujillo, co-founder of the Latino Donor Collaborative (LDC) and former Fortune 200 CEO, argues that Hollywood studios are leaving billions of dollars on the table by failing to produce and properly market content for U.S. Latinos. Based on the 2024 LDC U.S. Latinos in Media Report, Latinos  purchase 24% to 29% of all box office tickets, yet remain one of the most underrepresented groups on screen.

Same Opening Week, Different Budgets

The simultaneous release of the two Latino themed independent films Clika and The Dreamer Cinderella, represented a strong moment for Latino representation in cinema this past January. Led by Mexican American directors, producers, and actors, both projects reflected contemporary cultural themes. However, their markedly different production and marketing resources set the stage for contrasting box office trajectories.

Clika, a music drama directed by Michael Greene and produced by Jimmy Humilde, follows Chito (Jay Dee), a small-town musician whose viral success propels him into the world of corridos tumbados, a subgenre of regional Mexican rap music. Distributed in 522 theaters, the film benefited from the backing of Columbia Pictures, a Sony subsidiary with a robust marketing infrastructure. Given Sony’s existing ties to Humilde’s Latin record label Rancho Humilde, the project aligned seamlessly with the company’s brand ecosystem.

The Dreamer Cinderella tells the story of Xochitl, a fruit vendor whose life changes when a filmmaker casts her as the subject of a daring bet, revealing her as a hidden star. Directed and produced independently Dr. Ruiz Productions with first time director Dr. Jose Luis Ruiz, this independent film was distriubted in only 16 theaters by Atlas Distribution. The difference in marketing visibility between these two films is stark, but as the performance data will show, scale is not the only strategy at producers’ disposal to drive attendance.

Measuring Momentum, Not Scale

Trying to evaluate each film’s marketing effectiveness by comparing their total box office gross ticket sales would be unfair. Between January 23 and January 27, Clika earned $1,520,455 while The Dreamer Cinderella earned $8,880—a differential that reflects their vastly different scales of distribution. Instead, it is more equitable to compare the percentage changes in daily gross ticket sales respective to each film. This approach highlights momentum rather than reach, an especially useful lens for independent films whose full box office data is often underreported. While these limitations make a fully precise picture difficult, the figures still offer a meaningful basis for interpretation.

Takeaway: Clika

Clika’s performance data shows relatively moderate fluctuations, meaning the film experienced smaller declines following opening day and steadier rebounds throughout the opening week. This suggests consistent brand recognition and predictable audience reach. Even when attendance dips, the film’s structural visibility helps cushion the decline later in the week, allowing it to recover audience attendance by the following weekend.

This performance can be attributed to an ongoing baseline marketing presence supported by a studio-led campaign and a distributor such as Columbia Pictures/Sony. The strategy included a strong digital footprint, paid social media exposure, radio and podcast interviews, and billboard placements, which are elements that align with the comprehensive distribution and promotional approach typically associated with major studio releases.

Takeaway: The Dreamer Cinderella

The Dreamer Cinderella’s performance during opening week, by contrast, is characterized by sharp declines followed by a dramatic rebound, with its highest upward growth occurring on January 27 the last day of the theatrical run. This trajectory suggests a performance closely tied to marketing pushes, particularly those driven by community-based promotion, with targeted theaters, universities, film festivals, paid social media and community partners.

“…when the audience is targeted correctly, they respond.”

As an independent film, the key insight here is clear: When marketing aligns with audience outreach, the response is powerful. The spike in performance shows that when the audience is targeted correctly, they respond. Independent films can perform well, as audience interest often exists, but tailored marketing is required to make a meaningful difference during opening week.

In the case of The Dreamer Cinderella, there was an intentional effort to invest independent dollars into marketing, almost as a case study to test the idea that even modest marketing spending can influence performance and drive attendance.

Dr. Ruiz Productions joined forces with Entertainment Media Specialist to launch a groundbreaking case study of with The Dreamer Cinderella, and Latino independent film marketing. Modeled after major studio marketing strategies—but without the luxury of nine-figure budgets.  The Independent Latino Film Marketing Campaign (ILFMC) study harnessed the power of grassroots community outreach, mobilizing Latino organizations nationwide and reaching out to independent thaters to screen the film through a film distributor and community engagement. Together all helped build a smart, targeted, community-driven release strategy. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

“Ultimately, this analysis suggests that budget size matters less than how resources are allocated. As Latino audiences continue to grow and drive box office revenue, films made for these communities must be paired with marketing strategies that recognize their value and meet them where they are.”

The opening-week data makes one point clear, namely that marketing determines whether Latino audiences show up, not whether they exist. Clika’s steadier performance reflects sustained visibility, whereas The Dreamer Cinderella’s volatility reveals untapped demand that can be activated when outreach is strategic.

For Latino films, especially independent films, success is not a question of scale but marketing precision. When marketing investment is culturally informed and strategically deployed, independent projects can compete with large-scale commercial releases. In a market as powerful as the Latino audience, marketing is not optional. It is the difference between invisibility and impact, something that Latino movies should consider to gain a foothold in the film industry.

Ultimately, this analysis suggests that budget size matters less than how resources are allocated. As Latino audiences continue to grow and drive box office revenue, films made for these communities must be paired with marketing strategies that recognize their value and meet them where they are.

The post Marketing Latino Films: What The Films ‘Clika’ and ‘The Dreamer Cinderella’ Show Us first appeared on .