THE FUSE

Yesterday, Disney released a new trailer for Hexed, the next movie in its animated canon coming to theaters on November 25. It stars Hailee Steinfeld as Billie, a teenage girl who discovers she has magical powers and then finds a world of witches and wizards where she can finally belong. I’m not really here to make any snap judgments about the film as a whole, but when watching the trailer, I couldn’t help but notice that there’s something a bit off about the way the action is framed. It turns out I wasn’t alone, as several fans have pointed out that, rather than making creative use of all the space within the frame, the movie seems deliberately staged to keep the focus in the center of the screen. What would motivate such a choice? Many fans assume it’s so that clips from Hexed can be effectively shared on vertical-screen video apps like TikTok and Instagram.