Hollywood romance gets intense with little dramas. Will you continue?

Sunnyvale, California – A young woman strives to raise $50,000 for her mother’s life-saving medical treatment. She will get the money, but only if she agrees to her sister’s unusual proposal: marriage to her wayward fiancé, who comes from a wealthy family but also has a record of corruption.

This is the plot of an episode of “The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband.”

This may sound like a telenovela. In fact, it is a popular series that appears on ReelShort, an application through which audiences can watch high-quality dramatic tales reminiscent of soap operas called mini-dramas through their smartphones.

Unlike regular TV shows, this drama consists of more than 60 episodes, each lasting one to three minutes. After six episodes, viewers hit a paywall, where they can continue watching ad-free with a $20 weekly subscription, watch ads or pay as you go.

The series has already garnered more than 494 million views since its launch in 2022, and ReelShort says it has generated more than $4 million from the show.

With titles like “The Billionaire Sex Addict and His Therapist,” “How to Tame a Silver Fox,” and “Pregnant by My Ex’s Dad,” smaller dramas tend to be more action-packed and have tight budgets, typically less than $300,000 per series. Many of them were filmed in Los Angeles.

Short-form serialized dramas first took off in China, where they are hugely popular and generated $6.9 billion in revenue last year, even surpassing domestic box office sales, according to DataEye, a Shenzhen-based digital research firm.

Now, Hollywood is starting to take notice of the petite figure.

In August, the investment arm of Lloyd Brown — the former ABC executive and chairman of talent agency WME — and Los Angeles entertainment studio Cineverse formed a joint venture called MicroCo to build a platform for micro-dramas.

“Traditional Hollywood has moved away from the whole genre and storytelling that fans love, and I think microdramas have really taken advantage of that and really leaned into that fanbase,” said Susan Rovner, chief content officer at MicroCo.

studio interest

Major studios are investing in smaller dramas in an attempt to replicate China’s success and find new ways to appeal to younger audiences accustomed to watching short-form videos on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms on the go.

Fox Entertainment recently announced an equity stake in Ukraine-based Holywater, a boutique drama producer. Under the deal, Fox Entertainment Studios (a division of Fox Entertainment) will produce more than 200 vertical video titles over the next two years for Holywater.

The Walt Disney Company’s accelerator program, which invests in startups, recently named boutique drama company DramaBox, whose parent company is based in Singapore, as part of its 2025 class.

David Min, vice president of innovation at The Walt Disney Company, said he believes smaller dramas will continue to do well, especially as younger audiences become accustomed to watching entertainment on their phones.

“We have to be where everyone is consuming their content, so this is an opportunity for us,” Min said in an interview. “…This is just another new platform to try and explore and see if it’s a good fit for the company.”

This year, ReelShort, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., says it will produce more than 400 shows, compared to 150 shows last year.

All productions are filmed in the United States and mostly in Los Angeles, ReelShort CEO Joey Jia said in an interview. The company plans to build a studio in Culver City that will turn its most popular small-scale dramas into films.

“We offer a lot of opportunities,” Jia said.

Warsaw-based DramaShorts said in 2026 it aims to film 120 small drama projects in the United States, up from 45 to 50 this year. About 25% of them will be in the Los Angeles area.

“People are very used to consuming content through social media, through TikTok, through Instagram, through Facebook and sharing information,” DramaShorts co-founder and chief operating officer Leo Ovdenko, 29, said in an interview. “I think it’s only a matter of time before the big players also reach this stage.”

The company works with production partners in Los Angeles who hire actors, writers and crew members working on fast-turnaround projects, a bright spot in a faltering labor market.

“The upside to filming in Los Angeles is that it’s the center of Hollywood,” said executive producer, writer and director Chrissy De Guzman, who has worked on DramaShorts projects. “We know how the state of our industry is right now, so a lot of talent has moved into the vertical.”

Although vertical dramas are film-length, they are divided into small chapters and produced quickly. A 100-page script might be shot in just one week instead of one month for a feature film.

Each chapter usually features a suspenseful or dramatic moment, whether it’s a slap or a character in danger.

“It touches every little emotional point,” said Caroline Ingborn, chief operating officer of Palo Alto-based Luma AI, which provides small drama companies with AI tools. “It connects you that way and because it’s easy to push [Play]. All you have to do is watch the next episode.”

Labor tensions

With budgets so low, many productions are non-union, prompting some writers and actors to work under pseudonyms to avoid facing penalties from their unions, several people who work on the shows said.

In an effort to address this issue, performers union SAG-AFTRA recently announced that it had created agreements covering low-budget vertical dramas.

Writers Guild of America West President Michelle Mulroney said in an interview that the guild recognizes that “there are companies trying to do this work outside of unions, so the guild wants to help our members…in ways that enable them to work in vertical sectors and make sure they get that work.”

Small drama producers said they would welcome talking to unions, but questioned whether their business models could support union contracts.

“We are not anti-union at all,” said Eric Heintz, executive producer at Snow Story Productions, which makes vertical dramas for platforms including DramaShorts.

Despite labor tensions, these short-lived dramas provided a major source of employment for Hollywood workers who struggled to find jobs as production moved from California.

Corey Gibbons, 44, a director of photography, said the vertical dramas kept him in business when other work dried up.

“I have a feeling we’re on the verge of something that’s really going to change,” Gibbons said. “I’m just excited to be a part of it.”

So was 27-year-old actor Sam Nejad, a former “Bachelorette” contestant who began acting in vertical dramas in January. He said he has taken one or two leadership roles a month since then and can earn $10,000 a week.

“It is a new art,” Nejad said. “The new Tarantino, the new Scorsese are all going through this.”

ReelShort’s office in Sunnyvale looks more like a typical Silicon Valley startup than a Hollywood studio.

Jia, the CEO, sits at a desk in an open living area with his employees. Along the office walls are framed posters with titles like “Prince with Benefits,” “Never Divorce a Secret Billionaire Heiress,” and “All the Wrong Reasons.” Gia proudly points out why each program is special on a modern tour of space.

“I don’t have the money to hire celebrities,” Jia said. “I rely 100% on the story.”

The 46-year-old businessman, who has a background in electrical engineering, He launched his company in 2022. At the time, there was not much interest from Hollywood studios.

The doubts came in the wake of the high-profile collapse of Quibi, the startup led by studio mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and technology executive Meg Whitman, which worked with A-list movie stars on series that would appear on the app in short chapters. Quibi raised $1.75 billion, but closed roughly six months after launching.

Jia took a different approach. Instead of signing expensive deals with celebrities, he hires students or recent graduates from colleges like the University of Southern California to work for his company.

Jia approves of all the little drama stories in ReelShort, which he says is expected to generate $1 billion in revenue this year.

A ReelShort representative declined to reveal the company’s profits but said the business is profitable.

ReelShort has 70 million monthly active users, 10% of whom are paid users, Jia said.

Churn — the rate at which customers drop weekly subscriptions — can reach more than 50% at ReelShort, Jia said. This makes it crucial for a company to have a constant stream of content that attracts customers to keep paying. There are currently more than 400 in-house addresses and about 1,000 licensed addresses.

Like others in the genre, ReelShort and DramaShorts rely heavily on data metrics like customer retention and paid subscribers to make their content decisions.

“A lot of directors think, when I make a movie, I don’t care how people think, this is my creativity, it’s my story,” Jia said. “No, this is not your story. Your success… should be defined by people.”