{"id":358055,"date":"2025-12-19T12:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T12:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/358055\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T12:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T12:55:08","slug":"television-in-titbits-the-rise-of-the-billion-dollar-microdrama-industry-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/358055\/","title":{"rendered":"Television in titbits: the rise of the billion-dollar microdrama industry | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have been anywhere close to the social media blast radius of The Summer I Turned Pretty<\/a>, Amazon Prime\u2019s breakout<\/a> YA series on a tortuous teen love triangle, you may be familiar with the plight of Henley and Luca. The star-crossed lovers of a short-form video series called Loving My Brother\u2019s Best Friend \u2013 plot self-explanatory \u2013 have made waves on TikTok with yearning stares and \u201cI\/we can\u2019t do this\u201d drama that echo the many fan edits of beloved TV couple Belly and Conrad. But whereas The Summer I Turned Pretty explored its central tension over 40-minute episodes on streaming, Loving My Brother\u2019s Best Friend, produced by a short-form company called CandyJar, distilled its appeal to its barest essences: sexual tension hook, escalating line and cliffhanger sinker, all within two-minute \u201cepisodes\u201d on your phone. Without even meaning to or really wanting to, I watched the first 10 chapters (of 44) in one 15-minute gulp \u2013 and I\u2019m not the only one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hollywood is hoping that you, too, will be hooked. Though Loving My Brother\u2019s Best Friend may not look like a typical Hollywood product \u2013 in fact, it resembles some mix of teen show, soap opera and amateur fan-cam edit \u2013 the industry is investing heavily in the future of series like it: low-budget, mobile-only \u201cmicrodramas\u201d<\/a> with episodes between 60 and 90 seconds. These shows, also known as \u201cverticals\u201d for their phone orientation, have already become widely popular in China, where mobile screens dominate entertainment even more than in the US. In just three years, revenue for serialized short-form drama in China rose<\/a> from $500m in 2021 to $7bn in 2024, and is projected to reach $16.2bn by 2030. The global microdrama market for 2025 is estimated at anywhere from $7bn to 15bn \u2013 and booming, with nearly triple revenue growth<\/a> for microdrama companies outside China in the past year.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Until recently, major players in Hollywood stood on the sidelines, content to let such companies, which make money via advertising or user gaming app-esque \u201cmicropayments\u201d, release risible shows including Fake Married to My Billionaire CEO or Fated to My Forbidden Vampire. But the boom in business \u2013 along with continued<\/a> industry<\/a> consolidation<\/a> and production shifts<\/a> away from<\/a> California \u2013 has made cost-efficient microdrama impossible to ignore. \u201cIt is the first inning,\u201d said Bill Block, the former CEO of Miramax whose new microdrama venture GammaTime has raised over $14m from such investors as Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. \u201cThis is now a firmly established market, in the beginning, with lots to explore in terms of taste.\u201d<\/p>\n

If ReelShort and DramaBox, as Block said, \u201cdefined and won the first round\u201d, Hollywood is looking to win the second. In just a few months, a flurry of deals<\/a> have brought industry mettle into the still nascent space, indicating a potential revolution in serialized entertainment. In August, several prominent studio veterans \u2013 former WME and ABC entertainment head Lloyd Braun, former Showtime president Jana Winograde, and ex-NBC Universal Television chair Susan Rovner \u2013 founded MicroCo, backed by tech-driven entertainment company Cineverse. In October, Fox Entertainment announced an equity stake investment in the Ukrainian company Holywater, which owns the My Drama app, with a commitment to make more than 200 new shows for the platform in two years. Disney<\/a> has given DramaBox a spot in its selective accelerator program, betting the company<\/a> will expand beyond werewolves and billionaire romance. Spanish-language company TelevisaUnivision is on track to release 40 telenovela shorts this year on its app ViX, with another 100 for 2026. Paramount Skydance promoted its studio film Regretting You<\/a> via ReelShort and is working<\/a> with the company to cross-pollinate material. Lionsgate and Hallmark are reportedly doing the same<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is not Hollywood\u2019s first crack at shortform content. Companies from Netflix to Sundance TV have experimented with premium short-form<\/a> \u2013 often, glossy episodes south of 15 minutes \u2013 for the better part of a decade. You may recall the spectacular bellyflop that was Quibi<\/a>, the \u201cquick bite\u201d platform founded by DreamWorks Animation co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman that launched<\/a> in spring 2020 with high-budget series, A-list talent and $1.75bn in funding \u2013 only to fold within six months. (Its content sold to Roku for a mere $100m.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But industry veterans are betting that things are different this time. For one, TikTok viewing habits are far more entrenched now than in 2020. And Hollywood, as a place and industry, is \u201cgoing through a real moment of transition\u201d, said Natalie Jarvey, an entertainment journalist for the Ankler<\/a> who has closely tracked<\/a> the rise of microdrama production in Los Angeles<\/a>. From executives to directors, writers to crew, \u201cthere are a lot of people who\u2019ve been squeezed out of jobs,\u201d she said. \u201cEveryone is searching for the silver bullet \u2013 what\u2019s going to save Hollywood? What\u2019s going to bring jobs back?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer could be a $75,000 short-form filmed over a couple of days and released within weeks. \u201cA lot of people who\u2019ve worked for a long time in movies and TV to start to consider, well, maybe I could go work for a microdrama or I could make one myself,\u201d said Jarvey. \u201cIt\u2019s offering a glimmer of hope for a lot of people in this town right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The barren labor landscape in Los Angeles was one major consideration for Anthony Zuiker, the creator of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, to begin writing microdramas for Block\u2019s GammaTime. \u201cI have a lot of people that I love that can\u2019t find work,\u201d he said. Microdrama production is entirely non-union, swift and cheap \u2013 the budget for most shows hovers around $100,000 total \u2013 but it is work and it can be lucrative, with some actors minting six-figure careers<\/a> virtually overnight. (Last month, Sag-Aftra, the major actors\u2019 union, proposed<\/a> a contract to allow microdrama companies to employ union actors for rock-bottom minimum rates \u2013 $250 a day for lead performers, $164 for everyone else \u2013 plus provisions for overtime, pension and health contributions, and standard protections for stunts and sex scenes. The deal has not been finalized.)<\/p>\n

Zuiker is betting on microdramas\u2019 potential to circumvent some longstanding structural issues with traditional entertainment. For one, the protracted timelines of film and TV production, which often stretches into the years even when things go smoothly. With microdramas, \u201cyou can write an hour movie in a couple of days, shoot for five days, and then have it on a platform in 10 days.\u201d Zuiker has already written four bite-ified movies for GammaTime, which launched this fall with 20 titles spanning true crime, thriller and romantic melodrama.<\/p>\n

And as traditional film and TV continues to lose younger viewers to YouTube and TikTok, microdramas could court new audiences with its \u201cfreemium\u201d model \u2013 a chunk of episodes for free, then additional ones unlocked from a few cents to a few dollars via in-app \u201ccoins\u201d like money in a slot machine. As a writer, \u201cI have to understand where this is going and not just ignore it,\u201d said Zuiker. \u201cI see the failed broadcast model. I know the challenges of streaming and cable. This is becoming something that\u2019s getting some momentum. Why wouldn\u2019t I want to be in this space?\u201d<\/p>\n

That space comes with a host of pitfalls, not least of all the bare-bones budget. Though Zuiker has embraced the challenge of taking \u201chigh-end scripts and figuring out a way with paltry budgets, thin access to top-tier talent, thin access to top-tier directors, and making that all work for someone to say, \u2018this is worthy of me paying for it,\u201d he\u2019s still working on the question: \u201chow do we do premium so it\u2019s not so awful?\u201d A writer has less than two minutes to establish characters, stakes, and a reason to keep watching. \u201cOrganically, I\u2019m trying to figure out the rhythm of the writing, because I think that\u2019s the only way this will sustain,\u201d said Zuiker. \u201cThe more we flip on TikTok, the more we\u2019re going to want to watch movies like that on TikTok. But there has to be constructive narratives.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the challenge of audience, somehow at once vast, fractured and siloed. Though mobile-friendly suggests a youthful customer base, the current US microdrama audience skews heavily female and over 45. Thus it\u2019s still an open question whether the US microdrama business will expand beyond, as Bloomberg\u2019s Lucas Shaw put in on industry insider podcast The Town<\/a>, \u201csoft-core porn\u201d for young women, or whether higher-budget shorts, a la Quibi, can compete with the quick and cheap and free. \u201cEveryone who\u2019s making microdramas is looking to raise the bar,\u201d said Jarvey. \u201cThe question is how to balance increasing the production value a little bit, bringing on some more well-known talent with not kind of losing what makes them microdramas. Because if suddenly you\u2019re increasing the budget significantly, then it starts to look a lot more like a Quibi.\u201d<\/p>\n

As in Hollywood at large, some are betting on generative AI, which GammaTime uses to suggest storylines based on viewer habits, though not to actually write the material \u2014 \u201cthe hook writing, we have a respect for and appreciation of. And cliffhanger writing, too, is human-led,\u201d said Block, but \u201cthe concepts of decision making can be AI, demand-driven.\u201d (The company counts Slava Mudrykh, former head of Google Gaming, as a co-founder, along with Quibi\u2019s Alex Montalvo as chief content officer.) Others, such as Zuiker, as more hesitant \u2013 \u201cI think when that data drives the creative, it can be problematic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Block foresees microdramas as a mode of entertainment unto themselves, with their own star ecosystems. (Fairly or not, Cosmo has already declared<\/a> Nick Skonberg, of Loving My Brother\u2019s Best Friend, to be the first \u201csuperstar\u201d of the \u201cvertical movie industry\u201d.) He likened his efforts with GammaTime to those of Samuel Z Arkoff, the 1960s pioneer of independent, low-budget, youth-focused genre films \u2013 Beach Blanket Bingo, I Was A Teenage Werewolf and the like \u2013 as the old Hollywood studio system collapsed.<\/p>\n

Hollywood again finds itself at a moment of significant upheaval \u2013 shifting viewer tastes and habits, increasingly mobile audiences, rapidly consolidating corporate power<\/a>. In these shifting sands, microdramas could fundamentally alter how Western audiences consumer serialized storytelling. Zuiker predicted that in a matter of years, microdramas will \u201cbe every bit at the forefront of consumption that streaming once was, that cable once was, that broadcast once was\u201d. Short-term, it\u2019s \u201cbad acting, salacious, hokey titles, billionaire\u2019s mistress\u201d, but \u201cin the long term, it\u2019ll be premium content written for the device, where the optimal experience of the flip is so enticing you can\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jarvey was more measured. \u201cI think of it as what soap operas are to prestige entertainment,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone who works in microdramas would say that they\u2019re trying to compete with a Sunday night HBO drama.\u201d (Indeed, Block does not.) \u201cBut they are trying to find that sliver of time in your day where maybe you want something that\u2019s a little bit faster to consume, or something that\u2019s going to hook you and keep you scrolling.\u201d<\/p>\n

What microdramas are still missing is a true, bonafide hit \u2013 something that escapes social media containment and reaches the majority of US audiences who likely still have not heard of the format. Something that gets and keeps the attention of skeptics. A show like Loving My Brother\u2019s Best Friend that actually becomes a viral success<\/a> like The Summer I Turned Pretty. But those in the space assure that it is still too early to judge whether microdramas are a sea change or, like many short-form initiatives before it, a passing, tech-hyped fad. \u201cIf you want to go in with a critical eye and tear apart these vertical shorts at this stage, you\u2019ll have a field day. It\u2019s easy to do that,\u201d Zuiker cautioned me. They\u2019re not going to be good, breakout hits, he said, without some more R&D, money and, perhaps, institutional support. \u201cThis is a new thing \u2013 we need to get behind this and find this so we can employ more people, tell better stories, and have an industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are learning so much more every movie,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s all very TBD.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you have been anywhere close to the social media blast radius of The Summer I Turned Pretty,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-358055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}