LOS ANGELES (AP) — While the entertainment industry was focused on the streaming wars, Emmy-nominated actor and producer Issa Rae was paying close attention to a completely different kind of storytelling format: microdramas.
Already familiar with building an audience online, Rae became fascinated by China’s rapidly expanding market for short, phone-first soap operas, recognizing the potential to cultivate new audiences and develop intellectual property.
This past May, Rae’s production company Hoorae Media released the thriller “Screen Time,” widely considered one of the first studio-caliber microdrama projects from an established Hollywood company. The TikTok-backed series racked up close to 75 million views within its opening week.
Rae sees the format as offering opportunities that traditional media simply cannot match. “Because the price point is lower than TV and film, there’s an opportunity to take risks,” she told The Associated Press. “The turnaround time is also a lot quicker than TV and film, which allows us the opportunity to be more topical and relevant.”
Microdramas — vertically filmed episodes that typically run between one and three minutes — have become one of the fastest-growing segments in all of entertainment. That growth is catching the attention of celebrities, independent creators, and major media companies eager to connect with viewers who increasingly turn to their smartphones for stories.
Rae also pointed to the interactive nature of the format as a major draw. “The communal experience is also amazing,” said Rae, whose web series “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl” helped launch her career. “You can see what other viewers think and engage with their commentary in real time.”
On the surface, the formula appears straightforward: bite-sized, bingeable episodes built around themes of romance, betrayal, and redemption — with titles like “The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband.” The first several episodes are typically free, with viewers paying to unlock additional content.
The model first took hold in China during the pandemic and has since exploded globally. Technology research and advisory group Omdia estimates worldwide microdrama revenues will reach $14 billion by the close of 2026 — and the American entertainment industry is taking notice.
Peacock has launched a dedicated microdrama hub. Fox Entertainment has invested in microdrama producer Holywater and pledged to produce hundreds of vertical titles. TelevisaUnivision is producing serialized short-form dramas for its ViX platform.
Kevin Hart’s HartBeat has moved into vertical comedy, Kim Kardashian is backing scripted mobile-first content through an investment in microdrama platform ReelShort, actor Taye Diggs has appeared in vertical series targeting smartphone viewers, and filmmaker Deon Taylor is developing the sports-focused vertical series “I Am Hoop.”
At this year’s MIP London television market, executives revealed that some of the largest microdrama platforms are channeling as much as 90% of their budgets into marketing as competition for viewers heats up.
Hoorae Media spent more than two years studying the format before launching “Screen Time,” ultimately concluding that microdramas represented a lasting shift rather than a fleeting trend.
“The connective tissue being the phone, and how much time people are already spending on their phone,” said Dzifa Yador, head of digital at Hoorae Media. “We’re meeting audiences where they are.”
Yador said the format also gives creators something increasingly hard to find in traditional Hollywood — the ability to test ideas, grow an audience, and hold onto ownership without waiting years for a studio to greenlight a project. “You definitely get rid of the gatekeepers,” she said. “You can greenlight your own show.”
Long before Hollywood took interest, independent creators were already demonstrating that audiences would spend hours following serialized stories on their phones. Among the most successful is Kountry Wayne, a Georgia native who pivoted from comedy sketches to an interconnected universe of relationship dramas after observing that the drama content had longer staying power.
Wayne, whose Amazon Prime Video stand-up special “Kountry Wayne: Nostalgia” debuted this year, said he now puts out 50 episodes per day. He recently shared that his content generated approximately 1.4 billion views on Facebook and another 100 million on YouTube over the course of a single month, though Meta and YouTube both declined to independently confirm those numbers.
As Hollywood’s appetite for vertical storytelling grew, Wayne said he turned down eight-figure deals to license or acquire his content, choosing to retain ownership instead. “If they get in, they’re going to try to control it,” he said. “I knew it was growing.”
The American Black Film Festival, one of the country’s leading showcases for Black film and television, has opened a door for emerging storytellers through the format. The festival launched its first-ever microdrama showcase this year, narrowing hundreds of submissions down to eight finalists.
Festival programmer Bobbi Broome said the overwhelming response showed just how quickly creators are embracing microdramas. “At least two or three of them said that they decided to try doing a microdrama because they saw the ABFF competition start,” Broome told AP.
For many of those filmmakers, Broome said, the showcase was about more than producing short content — it was a chance to test concepts that might eventually grow into larger projects. “I spoke with a couple of filmmakers who said that this was kind of like their proof of concept for a feature,” she said. “The industry is changing day in and day out.”
Rae remains confident the format has only begun to show what it can do. “We knew audiences will appreciate premium content that is free and easily accessible,” she said. “If the story is engaging, the acting is good and it generally feels made with them in mind, they will engage.”
For Wayne, the future of microdramas comes down to the same device that built his following. His videos are filmed on cellphones with minimal traditional editing, allowing his team to move fast while still delivering high-quality visuals. “The eyeballs are on the phone,” he said. “We still go to the theater. We still watch TV. But we’re on this phone.”
