They are as short as a toothbrushing tutorial but pack the same spicy wallop as a BookTok romantasy. They’re as bingeable as a bajillion-dollar Netflix series, but with the stripped-down aesthetics of a Hallmark movie.
I’m talking, of course, about microdramas—the fast, fizzy serialized videos flooding phones worldwide. In just a few years, they’ve become a full-blown phenomenon, generating billions in revenue without Hollywood’s help. At least, not until now.
As studios grapple with a sluggish summer box office and another thin fall TV lineup, a growing legion of viewers is glued to stories made exclusively for their phones. Microdramas—or vertical shows, as they’re often called—blend the raw emotion of K-dramas with a TikTok sensibility. Think high-intensity, telenovela-like series, unfurling in one-to-three-minute chunks across 50 to 100 mostly paywalled episodes. They may have titles such as Doctor Boss Is My Baby Daddy or Signed, Sealed, Deceived by My Billionaire Mailboy, but their massive, global fan base makes them impossible to dismiss.
A structural shift
Born in China during the early COVID years, microdramas have since ballooned into a $7 billion industry, and are projected to generate $10 to $13 billion in revenue by 2027. More than 40 dedicated apps, including Seoul-based Vigloo and California’s ReelShort, operate on a freemium model. Curious viewers can try a multi-episode taste of most series, with the option to continue by either paying to subscribe or making in-app purchases.
Although the format first gained traction in Eastern regions, the U.S. emerged last year as the largest market for microdrama apps, contributing 60% of global revenue, according to data analysis firm Sensor Tower. Apps like GoodShort and DramaBox now regularly jostle with Netflix for top slots in entertainment rankings. (To be clear, these companies remain well behind Netflix in revenue and profit.)
Now, as U.S. demand for vertical shows surges, a group of Hollywood veterans is jumping in. MicroCo, a new partnership between horror-focused studio Cineverse and Lloyd Braun’s Banyan Ventures, has tapped former Showtime president Jana Winograde as CEO and ex-NBCUniversal content chief Susan Rovner as COO. The company’s still-unnamed app won’t launch until next spring, but its very existence suggests a massive sea change is currently underway.
“Vertical viewing is not just a passing trend,” says Neil Hyuk-jae Choi, CEO of Vigloo parent company SpoonLabs, “but a structural shift.”
Don’t call it Quibi 2.0
To understand what microdramas are, it’s important to know what they’re not, which is: Quibi.
Jeffrey Katzenberg’s quixotic quest to bring short-form A-list streaming content to the masses failed spectacularly, lasting all of seven months in 2020. Once it officially folded, Quibi became both a cautionary tale and an all-purpose punch line for jokes about doomed media projects.
Here’s the thing, though: For all its flaws, the “quick bites” concept now seems rather prescient.
Quibi launched in April 2020, at the dawn of the pandemic, about a split-second before TikTok exploded. At the time, the average U.S. social media user had not yet internalized the habit of swiftly thumbing through a succession of vertical videos, nor had TikTok yet matured into a marketing juggernaut. (Indeed, microdrama studios now frequently seed samples on TikTok to reel in fresh viewers.)
“If they’d launched two years later, we’d probably be telling a very different story now,” says Cineverse president Erick Opeka, who is part of the MicroCo team.
It wasn’t just the length of the clips that sank Quibi. The company banked on repackaging star-driven cable-style shows into bite-size chunks. If consumers had wanted to see so-so cable TV shows in seven-minute increments, well, there were already plenty of streaming apps around—and all of them came equipped with pause buttons. What potential viewers seemed to want, in retrospect, was something they hadn’t seen before.
“Quibi was less microdrama and more micro-TV show,” says Sammi Cohen, a tech and culture influencer who runs the YouTube channel and podcast Social Currency. “The concept made so much sense to me, though; as people have shorter and shorter attention spans, it seemed like the obvious direction shift for the entertainment industry.”
Katzenberg’s venture had the right tech too early, and with the wrong content. Microdramas, however, seem to have arrived right on schedule—and many viewers are now quick to bite.
All gas, no brakes
These shows aren’t just TV that’s been shrunk down. They thrive on hyper-speed pacing, heightened dialogue, and Kabuki-level performances.
A conventional three-act structure in cinema requires 20 to 30 minutes spent setting up the characters and their goals, followed by another 40 to 50 minutes of compelling complications, and finally, 20 to 30 minutes of resolution. Microdramas, however, speed-run much of that process and fill it with the emerging conventions of the format, such as hidden identities, rescue moments, and love-triangle showdowns.
In effect, that means subtlety is out, and nearly every episode ends on a cliffhanger. (Viewers will never have to question, for instance, the motives of Escaping the Bridezilla’s protagonist as she tears through one conflict after another.)
“It’s a format designed for a generation hyper-exposed to endless streams of content, where you must capture attention instantly and sustain it across 50 or 60 episodes,” says Mauricio Osaki, a filmmaker with several microdramas to his credit, including 2025’s Fight for Love, the most-watched English-language series on Vigloo.
Closed-captioning is standard, so viewers can keep up while watching with the sound off during downtime in a college classroom, during a Zoom meeting, or at their kid’s Little League game. (The latter seems more likely, too, given that 70% of Vigloo’s viewership is over the age of 35.)
“It’s not really meant to be sat down and fully engaged with,” says Tristan McKenzie, a young filmmaker who has been producing microdramas, like this year’s Under the Hood, since 2022. “It’s a new type of media, in a language that’s actively being created.”
How your microdrama sausage is made
As several creators who spoke with Fast Company tell it, the all-gas-no-brakes urgency of these series carries over to production. Microdramas come together with head-spinning speed and efficiency, going from concept to streaming in a matter of months or even weeks. Budgets are tight, typically in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.
Apps like Vigloo look for creative partners who have already notched vertical hits, or those who seem most open to working in an experimental style and with limited resources. Those who deliver highly viewed shows for the app tend to come back for more, with the two sides working hand in glove to optimize the material. According to Osaki, who has made several microdramas with Vigloo, the company regularly shares data with returning collaborators.
“The data may reveal patterns—moments when viewers skip ahead or exit the story,” he says. “When we see those weak points, we rework them in future scripts, whether it’s adding a dramatic element, shifting when a reveal happens, or strengthening a cliffhanger.”
Because microdramas are tailored for vertical viewing, they require not only the ability to work lean, but also with a vastly different approach to visual storytelling. The 9:16 aspect ratio makes for a more intimate format, with much less room in each frame to add directorial razzle-dazzle. Instead, microdrama creators tend to focus heavily on the interactions between people, and what they are doing with their faces—sometimes with the assistance of an inner monologue.
“You can’t really do expansive vistas and big special effects,” Opeka says.
The industry has already spun up its own talent ecosystem to form a kind of MicroHollywood. Actor Kasey Esser, dubbed the “Brad Pitt of microdramas” by The Ankler, has starred in more than 50 vertical shows and now writes and produces them as well. Beyond Esser, a growing roster of recognizable, camera-ready actors has emerged—enough that, according to Choi, many Vigloo subscribers in the U.S. pick shows based largely on who’s in the cast.
Given that these projects operate outside the traditional entertainment system, they’re unsurprisingly non-union productions. Many of them also rely on AI to some degree, a practice still largely frowned on in Hollywood, as evidenced by this year’s Oscars fracas around minor AI usage in The Brutalist.
“For us, the question isn’t whether to use AI, but how to apply it creatively and responsibly,” Choi says.
The CEO claims that Vigloo has been testing AI in post-production, visual effects, and marketing assets. Considering how quickly Vigloo’s rival studios are churning out content, though, and how cookie-cutter the dialogue can get, it seems inevitable that some series are (or will be) written with AI. As for MicroCo, although Braun has signaled his intention to use AI tools to keep costs down, Opeka says the team has no plans for using them on the storytelling side.
“My perception is that AI scriptwriting is just not ready for prime time,” he says.
Microdramas, American-style
The shows geared toward U.S. audiences have started to develop their own identity. Romance is still the top genre everywhere, but some subgenres have especially taken off stateside. Romantasy titles, like Vigloo’s A Vampire in the Alpha’s Den, are huge in the U.S., the epicenter of BookTok, as are sports romances and high school-set dramas.
“The storytelling is definitely adapting [for Western audiences,]” Osaki says. “Compared to Asian IP, there are fewer toxic relationships; stronger, more empowered female characters; and the narratives are beginning to reflect settings and cultural touchpoints that feel distinctly American.” (One show, for example, takes place during spring break.)
Microdramas are on the verge of becoming even more Americanized as MicroCo assembles its in-house team of writers and prepares to flood the zone with fresh content. The team is wary, however, of messing too much with a winning formula.
“Romance is working very well in the microdrama space, and so we want to lean into that,” says MicroCo CEO Jana Winograde. “But it will have the same formatted nature. We’re not trying to change what it is.”
Beyond content, the fledgling company also aims to shake up the tech. Winograde says the app won’t just host viewing but will add social features—letting users like, comment, clip, share, and engage in ways the team hasn’t yet disclosed.
“We all wanted to make watercooler TV,” she says, “and now we have this thing in our hands that is both the TV and the watercooler.”
Microdramas may be light-years away from Hollywood film and television, but as audiences continue flocking to the bite-size series, the industry may have little choice but to rethink what storytelling looks like in the palm of a hand.
“Ultimately, humans will always crave stories,” Osaki says. “That’s part of who we are. And we’ll continue to explore new ways to tell them.”
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