Can Microdramas save Hollywood? Why the new vertical boom isn’t Quibi 2.0
Kenan Thompson’s next project leans deep into camp. He’s set to star as a man who’s kidnapped at a Toys R Us and locked in the store’s basement. When he realizes his handcuffs are actually made of fuzz, he escapes and returns home. Back to safety, he discovers that his wife has already moved on and hooked up with his twin brother, also played by the comedian.“Saturday Night Live” sketch? Weird one-and-done Netflix comedy? Nope. Thompson’s series, called “MisTaken,” is part of 100 Zeros, a new venture launched by Google and Range Media Partners to produce vertical microdramas.“It’s a soapy story that he probably wouldn’t be able to pitch as a television show,” says Range partner Rachel Douglas. Thompson, along with director McG and “The Bachelor” creator Mike Fleiss, is one of the more high-profile names looking to play in the fast-growing microdrama space, where series consist of 60 or so episodes that barely last a minute each and feature minimal production values, mostly unknown stars and budgets that average $250,000. Cliff-hangers, story arcs and emotional beats are required every few seconds to keep users engaged.“You see how people are watching their content, right? Everyone is on their phone,” Douglas says of the new twist on short-form content. “I was first surprised by how much talent wanted to play and make stuff. Before, they go through the traditional process and nothing gets made; they’re at the mercy of studios and notes and development. With this model, we’re like, ‘Yeah, you’re not going to make any money up front, but you can go make the thing that you’ve been really passionate about.’”The endgame could be a microdrama hit or IP that turns into a franchise — which then could be used as the proof of concept to pitch a long-form TV series or film. Some creators and stars see this as a steppingstone to entering the mainstream, but inside the growing microdrama industry, the goal is simply to make habit-forming content for viewers on their phones.Is there ultimately any money to be made in the microdrama space? Can this expanding industry give a struggling Hollywood workforce a shot in the arm? Or is this Quibi all over again?Founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, Quibi spent more than $1 billion on high-end short-form projects from A-list producers like Guillermo del Toro, Antoine Fuqua and Sam Raimi. But given the amount of free fare available on YouTube and TikTok, consumers weren’t looking to pay hefty subscription fees to watch a handful of premium shorts. Also, Quibi didn’t own its programming. And a worldwide pandemic didn’t help the timing. Launched in April 2020, Quibi shut down within six months, selling its library to Roku for a piddling $100 million.Now, Hollywood is approaching the microdrama space with more reasonable investments and expectations. And this time, there’s plenty of proof that it might work. After all, the microdrama boom that took off earlier this decade in China — where tech platforms were focused on churning out addictive serialized shorts on the cheap — is already here.“These were gaming companies and tech companies who created them based on a totally different model that’s all about feeding dopamine releases,” says Vertical Romance co-founder and producer Enzo Semmens. Semmens, who wrote the primer “Cliffwriting: The Microdrama Blueprint Hollywood Hates,” adds, “An episode is just a game of ‘Candy Crush.’ At the end of it, you have your cliff-hanger, and you want to play to get to the next level.”As the Chinese microdramas made their way west, U.S. platforms like DramaBox and ReelShort led the charge, spending millions of dollars to market the shorts to users and quickly building up a marketplace. With their low budgets and often cheesy storylines, microdramas were seen as a new take on an old genre — the TV soap opera — with one major difference. “They’re soap operas for the ADHD generation, because you’re taking out all the filler,” says former Showtime and ABC exec Jana Winograde, now the co-founder of microdrama studio and platform aTwist.According to estimates by consulting firm Owl & Co., revenue generated by vertical microdramas outside China will hit $4 billion this year, up 33% from $3 billion in 2025. That rapid growth has provided a glimmer of hope in Hollywood, where optimism has been in short supply. Creatives are still recovering from the strike-related work stoppages in 2023, along with a decline in volume as networks, streamers and studios pare back their output and production continues to flee to more economical settings.“It’s just moving so fast,” says Semmens. “If you work in Hollywood behind the camera, you’ve had the opportunity to work on a vertical. Someone has likely asked you over the past two or three years. The pay rates are a third to a quarter of what a traditional regular day would be, and the content isn’t stuff to necessarily be proud of. On the flip side, it’s like going to the gym: You have to keep working those muscles to stay fit. If this is a style of storytelling that’s going to stick around, you sure as hell should know how a cliff-hanger break works in a vertical. Because we’re going to be seeing a lot more of them.”Autumn Federici, whose vertical storytelling app Microhouse Films (co-founded with actor Taye Diggs) has partnered with Lifetime on the project “Tides of Temptation,” believes the new genre has given people in the industry “a lot of hope.”“It might not look the way that we’re used to in Hollywood and the way that I’ve made all of the films that I’ve made,” she says, “but I’m excited to continue to learn how the storytelling evolves.”Besides Lifetime, other legacy outlets entering the microdrama universe are Fox, which has an equity stake in the Ukrainian app startup Holywater, and Bravo, which is creating unscripted verticals with some of its stars. And they’ve already taken notice at Sunset Studios’ Las Palmas lot, where several camera-ready sets, including a courtroom, an apartment, a bar/restaurant, a hospital and an office have been built with verticals in mind.“We’d seen the growing number of productions in the vertical-microdrama space that were happening in Los Angeles,” says Sunset Studios sales senior VP Sean Griffin. “We see this as a growth market, and we’re very happy with the response so far. We’ve only been open for about six weeks, but we’re very optimistic and thrilled that this is bringing jobs back. Do I think that this is going to replace all of the production losses that we’ve seen in Los Angeles? That’s a much bigger question than I myself can answer.”Among the productions that have already shot on the Sunset Las Palmas vertical stages are microseries from aTwist, from Hollywood vets Winograde, chief content officer Susan Rovner and Lloyd Braun.Winograde says she didn’t even know about microdramas until last year. But suddenly she started hearing about them everywhere. “The pace of adoption has been incredible,” she says. The key was not just to be a producer of microdramas, but also to own the means of distribution. “While there may be more of a business right now producing microdramas than doing some other things in the entertainment business, it’s not a huge-margin business,” Winograde says. “It’s lower-cost programming. So to us, at least, what makes sense is to be on both sides of the coin — to be creating durable IP and owning it, but also to be monetizing it through our own means.”That includes keeping things on a tight budget (most series are written in-house and feature stars that only microdrama fans would recognize) and expanding the scope. Besides romance — easily the most common genre in the space — “we’re doing horror, we’re doing a musical, we’re doing thrillers, we’re doing a lot of different things,” Rovner says. “The thing that we’re finding, regardless of genre, is structure. The need to keep people engaged, the need to feel that pace, the need to really hook people in.”Expanding genres makes sense, as user demographics are quickly changing. Older women made up the initial audience for microdramas (anecdotally, hospital workers were among the early adopters). But audiences are getting younger, and a recent study by Holywater shows that males now make up as much as 30% of viewers, up from less than 2% just two years ago.Whereas most of the early microdrama platforms spent more on marketing and audience acquisition than on the content, Winograde and Rovner say they hope to offer up a higher-quality product that keeps users coming back to their app.“Obviously, costs are going up now that Hollywood’s stepping up,” says Lion Forge president/chief content officer Stephanie Sperber.That gives some hope to Tina Randolph Contogenis, the founder of Eris Talent Agency, which has devoted a lot of its attention in recent years to the microdrama space. Business was good until recently, Contogenis says, but opportunities then started to decrease due to the widespread adoption of AI-generated stars and stories by the original microdrama platforms, particularly from China. Perhaps the arrival of Hollywood’s deep pockets, and their promise not to be so AI-focused, will counteract that.“Things have really slowed down, to the point that people are panicking,” she says of her acting clients, who are getting fewer auditions than even a few months ago. “A lot of the [microdrama] companies are not doing as many live action, and they’re doing a lot more with AI.”For actress Janine Czajka, who has appeared in more than 18 verticals over the past year, the drop in microdrama work has been stark. “The goal is to keep doing as many of these as possible to keep fighting for live action with real humans.” But, on the bright side, she adds, “Yes, there are less projects out there for us as live actors, but the quality of them are getting so much better because we know that we have something to prove.”Says Semmens: “There was a very recent point where 75% of all permits from FilmLA were for verticals. But that was before the AI boom in the past few months, with so many being produced through generative AI.”Among the tech companies that pioneered verticals, there’s less of an ethical or qualitative dilemma about using AI — they don’t really care if their casts are AI-generated. But the Hollywood companies getting into the arena are much clearer about not using AI for acting or writing talent. (Special effects and production work is another thing.)But as they bolster storytelling and acting by bringing in more seasoned creatives, even veterans in the space are wondering how economically viable the business of microdramas ultimately will be. “We are figuring it out ourselves too,” says Elaine Frontain Bryant, executive VP and head of programming at Lifetime, A&E and LMN.The future will likely include more input and investment from brands, many of which have been eager to sink money into the business. Just as companies like Procter & Gamble helped launch soap operas in the early days of television, brands are looking to find ways to have more control over creative and new avenues to showcase their products beyond the usual 30-second ad.“This is a way to do content and create organic storytelling around brands that is less expensive, lower lift and a really viable way of telling stories,” Winograde says. Adds Douglas, “When we start talking to brands about how we can craft this microdrama together — ‘You can show up in a way that you’ve never showed up before, and you actually have a little bit more control’ — that’s when they light up.”The real test will come as some of the new Hollywood entrants to the vertical space really get going with their more polished releases. That could determine whether the microdrama might be here to stay, occupying a new lane in an industry starved for jobs.“I mean, we really are employing people in L.A.,” Rovner says. “Obviously, the budgets are lower. It’s quicker. You’re not on a series that’s going to go for 10 months or something. These shoots are about eight days, so it’s shorter work. I don’t think it replaces anything — it doesn’t replace what a Netflix show is. But I do think it’s going to get more people working and offer more opportunities.”-Variety
