What started out as as trend in Asia has spread in a big way to Europe, the U.S. and the rest of the world. Microdramas became all the rave last year and the global market is expected to make billions of dollars from the medium for years to come – estimates predict annual revenues will come in at between $20B to $30B by 2030. Late last year, the likes of Fox, Cineverse and Access Entertainment began investing in the space, and we’ve been tracking a bunch of nascent vertical video apps and creators from across the globe that could become household names over the coming year. Scroll down for the new wave.
Holywater: Hollywood meets microdrama
Country: Ukraine
Buzzy projects: Spark Me Tenderly, The Diamond Rose
Model: Ads, subscription and landmark deal with Fox
Bogdan Nesvit’s screensaver is the famous Walt Disney 1957 flow chart, which set out in epic detail how the Mouse House would leverage its IP across TV, movies, merchandise, comics and parks. Nesvit sees Holywater’s future in this vein. “The chart is genius,” he says. “We are not doing anything different from this. We are simply refurbishing it for the 21st century, using new distribution models relevant for the current world.”
The Ukrainian media outfit that runs the My Drama, My Passion and My Muse channels is probably too old to be fully considered part of the new wave, but it has certainly made a splash in the past few months, signing a first-of-a-generation microdrama deal with Fox and, two days after our interview, announcing a $22M raise in a funding round from the likes of Endeavor Catalyst and Brent Montgomery’s Wheelhouse.
Holywater started out in 2020 as a book supply firm helping amateur writers publish their work, but soon those books were being turned into interactive stories. It was then that the owners had their microdrama lightbulb moment, while acknowledging that, in order to get things right, they would need to leverage artificial intelligence.
Holywater’s biggest hit, Spark Me Tenderly, has generated more than 7 billion social impressions and $20M in revenue, outperforming the average U.S. theatrical box office per film in 2025, according to Holywater. The company made 70% of its revenue from subscription last year, but expects ad revenue to make up a bigger slice of the pie in 2026.
Most of Holywater’s subs are U.S.-based and Nesvit is enthused by the “huge synergies” achievable between Hollywood and vertical video creators. “Hollywood knows how to create great IP and microdramas are distributed on platforms like Instagram and TikTok,” he adds. “Take those two things together and you will get evolution for both.”
AppReel: “There are no gatekeepers”
Country: Israel
Buzzy projects: Survivors of the Heart, The Cinderella Trials
Model: Coins, subscription and rewarded ads
‘The Cinderella Trials’
Yoav Gross Productions
Israel has long punched above its weight in the global TV and film sphere, and it was the “sweet spot” between cost-effective content and gaming that inspired the team at Red Skies maker Yoav Gross Productions to move into microdrama.
The resulting platform from the established Israeli production house is AppReel, which is in the testing phase at present, but will have its worldwide launch imminently. Yoav Gross says: “When I started looking into the apps that already existed I was surprised that [microdrama] entrepreneurs all came from tech or gaming, so I thought one big advantage for us was that we understand content and can produce cost-effectively.”
That feeds into one of AppReel’s USPs – the company behind it will produce microdrama content for third parties as well as in-house. The app will launch with 25 shows at budgets of around $25,000 to $30,000 per show, some of which will be a “hybrid of AI and live action,” AppReel co-CEO Osher Assouline tells us. He is focusing on “extending the boundaries” of current vertical video genres and has greenlit shows including Survivors of the Heart, a Robinson Crusoe-inspired reality series, along with telenovelas and true crime pieces.
Assouline and his team may come from a traditional TV background, but they know who they are coming up against. “We are not competing with TV. We are competing with TikTok and games like Candy Crush,” he says. “This is more edgy than TV. There are no gatekeepers.”
Tattle TV: Monty Python for the vertical video generation
Country: UK
Big projects: MMA movie Tramp, reality show Dog Dates
Model: Ad-funded and gamified with Tattle Coins
‘Monty Python’
Universal/courtesy Everett Collection
Imagine the most British of British television – perhaps Monty Python, or Crystal Maze – and then superimpose that imagination onto vertical video. That is what filmmaker-artists Philip McGoldrick and Marina Elderton have been doing as they roll out their new platform, Tattle TV, which they say is the UK’s first microdrama app.
McGoldrick and Elderton are on the hunt for content to populate their library and are mulling approaching rights holders with a view to turning classics vertical. “Repurposing recognizable shows would be such an interesting introduction to what a vertical is,” says Elderton. “There is a huge proportion of the British population who don’t know what verticals are and if we can access those audiences as well as verticals fans then that is a bit of a goldmine.”
The pair first entered the microdrama game when trying to release their self-funded MMA movie Tramp in China, which to them sounded like a solid business model at a time when so many filmmakers were being priced out of production.
Tramp is one of the premium movies now available on Tattle TV and others are in development, while Love Island-esque reality show Dog Dates sprinkles a bit of fun. The team have leveraged TikTok to get the word out there on Dog Dates and are taking a gamified approach to subscriber acquisition, with Tattle Coins available for subs to avoid ads and to gain access to more content.
With growth plans, and a punchy, no frills attitude, McGoldrick and Elderton say microdramas could help the industry at a time when it has hit a slump. And they don’t even have to be shonky. “We can make an imprint with rich, culturally relevant content,” Elderton adds.
Black Forest Studios: The Crazy Maple Studio of Europe
Country: Germany
Big projects: Black Forest Royale, Mountain Medical
Model: In-house production, basic subs and ad-supported tiers
Black Forest Studios
The family owners of Germany’s Black Forest Studios have spent of their careers in commercials production, but they’re now taking inspiration from Crazy Maple Studio, the microdrama production powerhouse behind the mega-popular ReelShorts app. They have launched a vertical video production and distribution business that will launch in the summer with an advisory board including the likes of Station 19 actor Boris Kodjoe.
The app (name still under wraps) will launch with 16 completed series such as Black Forest Royale, about the life of an aristocratic German-American patchwork family in a castle in the Black Forest, high-speed thriller Guts and Mountain Medical, a drama similar to German series Schwarzwald Klinik. Once up and running, between one and three new series will be added each month, along with acquisitions and third-party commissions. Nina Gwyn Weiland, the app’s co-founder, is the lead in-house writer. The plan is for Black Forest’s European-focused microdramas to play globally, transporting European values as they go.
“We first became aware of the microdrama opportunity last spring,” says Sebastian Weiland, co-founder and Black Forest Studios CEO. “These are huge businesses out of China and now the U.S., and we’re very excited about the format’s possibilities.”
Shooting everything in-house removes several production issues, although Gwyn Weiland notes other problems such as actors being initially unwilling to work at lower pay rates than TV or film, and European agents being reticent to put up clients amid fears around fees and AI. “We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re getting there and want to work with great talent,” she says.
Their studio in High Black Forest near Freiburg was used by late Russian opposition leader and political prisoner Alexei Navalny as a base for his doc Navalny. So why vertical video now, when studio-for-hire business remains solid? “We’re always open for new business ideas and movements in the film industry,” says Sebastian Weiland.
Shorts: From France to the U.S.
Country: France
Big projects: Oops I Married My Enemy, Destined For My Billionaire Soulmate
Model: Weekly subscription, in-app purchases, advertising
Shorts
Part of the evolution of French microdrama business Shorts can be traced back to the set of a Darren Aronofsky picture 10 years ago when A.J. Letterel met Alejandro Fumero when they were both working as extras. The pair clicked and stayed in touch, with Letterel later moving to Europe and Fumero staying in the States and becoming a Hollywood producer.
When Letterel contacted Fumero in mid-2024, it wasn’t about acting, but an opportunity to team up and make vertical video originals for Shorts, a France-based microdrama app aimed at the U.S. market.
Letterel, now Head Creative Producer, and Sylvain Daressy, Product Manager at the app’s parent, Luni, needed a production partner after their research on microdramas in the U.S. and China gave them the distinct feeling a formalized production approach was the way to go.
“We are a mobile company, so we felt confident we could bring something of quality to the space, but in terms of production and the timelines, it felt like the Wild West – it still does,” says Letterel.
A deal to produce more than 40 series exclusively in English was struck, giving Luni the quantity it needed to launch Shorts. Romance-themed shows such as Oops I Married My Enemy and others that provide “a mix between classic short drama and lightness” have performed well, says Daressy, whereas higher concepts such as warewolf dramas have not. “We’re tapping into nostalgia – the Golden age of American romcoms,” adds Letterel.
Fumero Films co-founder Fumero calls vertical storytelling “a new cinematic language,” and credits Shorts for its approach. Adriana Santos, the other Fumero co-founder, adds working with the French company “feels like building the future in real time.”