Call me old, but I had never heard of microdramas, the new profitable frontier of content production that is spreading like wildfire through the rest of the world among Gen Z audiences.
Microdramas, or “verticals”, which originated in China during the Covid-19 pandemic, are short-form series you watch on your phone. The apps and platforms that host them have turned this once niche market into an industry that is expected to generate $9.5bn in China this year — more than the country’s movie theatre business — and $3bn in the US by the end of the decade.
According to recent research, in China 860-million viewers consume microdramas and 60% of them pay subscriptions for the privilege. The format consists of short, serialised, often cheaply shot and unapologetically soapy stories, which are made up of one- and two-minute episodes shot in vertical format specifically intended for watching on phones. Series can be made up of anywhere from 20 to more than 100 episodes and many microdrama platforms use a freeview model where the first few episodes are offered for free and thereafter users must pay to continue getting their hit.
The model, which is different from streaming platforms like Netflix as you pay per episode and not for access to a variety of content, has contributed significantly to the profits microdrama producers generate.
The titles of microdramas — Captured and Bound by My CEO, Rules of Protection: The Bodyguard I Hate and Loving My Brother’s Best Friend — indicate the general themes and tone of these shows and, while the budgets are comparatively small (a series costs $100,000-$300,000 to produce), the future of microdramas could be about to change radically as Hollywood has begun to take notice.
US companies are now in a race to see who will produce the genre’s first Netflix, with some planning to introduce subscription models that will offer fans one-stop access to a variety of shows made in-house and starring little-known — so cheaper — actors. Others, like those bought by former Miramax CEO Bill Block, aim to go a different route: creating more expensively produced content and using Hollywood star power to entice new audiences in the hope that an injection of quality will take the genre out of TikTok and other social media apps and into the mainstream.
The audiences for microdramas are also expanding beyond Gen Z youngsters whose phones have become extra limbs. Recent research has shown that in the US, the audience for “verticals” skews towards “affluent, urban women aged 30-60 who gravitate towards romance, CEO storylines and revenge narratives”, according to Variety.
This is not the first time that Hollywood has dipped its toe into short-form narrative waters. In April 2020, power player Jeffrey Katzenberg launched Quibi, a mobile-only streaming service offering original, high-quality content in episodes of 10 minutes or less. However, by December 2020, Quibi was shuttered after failing to attract enough subscribers. In January 2021 its content library was sold to streaming service Roku for less than $100m. The much-hyped service’s failure was attributed to several factors, including timing — it was launched just as the Covid-19 lockdowns changed consumer habits from watching “on-the-go” to watching on TV at home — and its inability to compete with established streaming behemoths like Netflix and YouTube.
This time around, the creators are adamant that it’s not just a fad but the future of narrative content consumption. Hollywood’s biggest union, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), has taken note of the change in habits and industry attitude, and announced that it is working on agreements for the microdrama sector that would allow creators to hire union members for their projects. SAG’s involvement will also hopefully improve conditions on set for actors in microdramas, many of whom complained in a 2024 Rolling Stone article of “gruelling hours, poor pay, racial disparity in leading roles, and lack of regulation”.
It’s not clear, nor perhaps really expected, that the rise of microdrama signals an end to more traditional viewing habits, but it’s certainly becoming obvious that there’s money to be made from targeting what Rolling Stone describes as viewers’ “in-between time, the passive scrolls that can be taken over by a choice ad placement or intriguing three-minute clip about a cheerleader and a hunky alpha werewolf”.
If that sounds like your kind of thing, then the future is bright, and you’ll have more than enough reasons to avoid what’s happening in the real world.
