Micro-dramas are short, fast-moving series made for smart phones. Most episodes last just one to three minutes. A full series can run anywhere from 50 to 100 episodes. They are usually filmed vertically – the natural way we hold our phones – and they move quickly, with dramatic twists and strong emotional hooks.
Since breaking out in China around 2020, micro-dramas have expanded rapidly across the globe and are now spreading worldwide, creating systemic impacts on production practices, distribution structures, and viewing habits. But micro-dramas are not simply “short films in vertical format.” They raise broader questions: What happens when we watch stories mainly on our phones, especially when distribution is governed by platforms and production is increasingly shaped by AI?
To understand micro-dramas, we can look at three important aspects: audiences, platforms, and AI.
China: Audience Scale and Platform Momentum
In China, micro-dramas have become a cultural and economic force. By 2024, estimates suggested the market was worth around US$7.31 billion, more than China’s 2024 box office of US$6.15 billion.
In 2025, the China box office recorded about US$7.5 billion, while the micro-drama market is estimated at US$10-14 billion. The audience base is enormous and still growing. The overall user base for micro-dramas is estimated at 696 million in 2024, while the cinema-going audience base is roughly 500 million.
In terms of mobile-platform competition, the growth of micro-drama platform – Hongguo, for example – signals mounting pressure on established long-form video platforms. In October 2025, Hongguo’s monthly active users reportedly rose to 245 million, surpassing established platforms Youku and Bilibili and becoming China’s fourth-largest video platform.
What is even more striking is how much time people spend watching micro-dramas. On average, users spend around 100 minutes per day on dedicated micro-drama apps. This is already approaching long-form video consumption patterns, where average daily time has continued to decline since 2022. This trend does not merely suggest that ‘micro-dramas are becoming more popular or better than other screen content’. Instead, it suggests that the format can fit more easily into everyday life and broaden the total audience base for screen content by lowering time and attention thresholds and embedding viewing into more fragmented daily routines.
Micro-dramas Outside China
Outside China, the micro-drama industry has also grown rapidly. Using net revenue from in-app purchases and subscriptions as the main metric, overseas markets reached US$2.38-3.0 billion in revenue in 2025. By January 2026 the United States remained the largest overseas market outside China, accounting for about 38% of revenue, followed by Japan (about 7%), Brazil (about 4.3%), the United Kingdom (3.3%), and others.
Importantly, expansion in 2025 appears to have moved beyond North America, Europe, and East Asia, spreading rapidly into a wider range of regions. For instance, compared with 2024, in 2025 Turkey’s market revenue increased by over 1,000%, reaching about US$18 million. Saudi Arabia and Vietnam also recorded multi-fold growth, with increases of around 884% and 643% respectively, reaching around US$10.2 million and US$17 million.
Another way to gauge growth outside China is through downloads of micro-drama apps which exceeded 1.2 billion in 2025 showing a year-on-year growth of about 135%. In these statistics, India (20%) and Indonesia (13%) are at the top of the table.
Nevertheless, leading overseas players are still predominantly Chinese companies. In 2025, ReelShort and DramaBox (both operated by Chinese companies) still accounted for 43.7% of total revenue, and their combined download share was also notable (24%). A group of fast-growing new platforms (such as DramaWeave, HappyShort, and FlickReel) likewise shows a pattern of Chinese-company dominance. These platforms are producing local content as well as China aimed content.
However, local platforms have also entered the competition, especially by building stronger local advantages in single-country markets. In India, several local apps show competitive shares (e.g. Story TV, Kuku TV, QuickTV). South Korea (e.g. Vigloo, TVING), Japan (e.g. Bump), and Israel (Shortical) have also seen rapidly growing local apps.
On the investment side, overseas internet capital and legacy entertainment players have continued to enter in 2025. The US micro-drama platform GammaTime reportedly raised a US$14 million seed round; Fox Entertainment invested in the Ukrainian AI micro-drama company Holy Water; the Indian micro-drama company Dashverse completed a US$10 million Series A round; and so on. These developments indicate that the globalisation of micro-dramas is no longer a one-way ‘China content export’ but is evolving into a platform ecosystem shaped by multi-sided competition.
These developments suggest new opportunities for the film industry, as well as new potential for screen aesthetics. Yet for the industry, a more pressing question is: why is this form able to attract such a large audience in such a short time?
News reports and industry briefings often describe micro-dramas as “vertical, short, and fast-paced.” Although intuitive, these formal descriptors are not sufficient to explain their success. After all, experiments with short, vertical content existed before this wave (for example, Quibi in the US).
“Silly and Fake”
One common criticism of micro-dramas is that they are “fake,” or “over-the-top.” Plots often feature impossibly wealthy characters, exaggerated romances, dramatic revenge arcs, and extreme twists.
At first glance, this sounds like a straightforward critique of production value and quality. For traditional screen practitioners, the solution can seem obvious: make the content more polished, and the problem disappears.
However, judging “fake/silly” as only a matter of craft misses the psychology of the audience. A better question to ask is: if they are fake, cringey, and silly, why do viewers remain so hooked?
Research on audiences suggests that the “fakeness” may actually be part of the appeal. Because the stories are clearly unrealistic, viewers don’t feel pressured to take them seriously. They can enjoy the emotional highs – romance, revenge, triumph – without confusing them with real life.
Consider, for example, the frequent exaggeration of wealth and status in micro-dramas: ten-billion-dollar necklaces, protagonists worth tens of trillions, and characters who combine unlimited power and wealth with being “perfect lovers.” In conventional narrative evaluation, such aspects undermine immersion in the story. For micro-drama viewers, however, these extremes can provide a kind of emotional license: precisely because they are obviously impossible in real life, it can feel safer to indulge.
This helps explain why, when asked whether “domineering male CEO” character types work against immersion and plausibility in the story, many female viewers respond along the lines of: “This kind of man cannot exist in real life; real men are terrible. However, I would never choose a partner based on this template. I know this is fake and unrelated to reality, so I can immerse myself without worry.”
This psychology also shapes micro-drama aesthetics, such as fast pacing. In today’s highly saturated media environment, audiences’ willingness to give their undivided attention to the work is increasingly rare: fewer audiences are willing to sit in silence in a cinema for two continuous hours; long-series viewers are increasingly accustomed to “social viewing” (watching while scrolling and chatting).
“Silliness” cannot be understood simply as a complaint about quality. In our research interviews, the concept can function as a mode of enjoyment precisely because it delivers definite emotional returns in a lighter register. Correspondingly, audiences often report distinctive viewing practices: watching at double speed (because plots feel simple) and skipping “draggy” segments (prolonged grievance, slow development), while keeping only the opening, the ending, and key payoff moments. These habits suggest that, unlike traditional fiction’s reliance on suspense and expectation, micro-drama viewers may be less interested in being pulled along and more interested in verifying expected rewards, repeatedly consuming similar stories for stable, predictable emotional payoffs.
Broadly speaking, a change in screen culture brought about by micro-dramas is no longer only about how to pull audiences into the story world. It raises a different challenge: when some audiences want lucidity and control, how can screen media build new relationships with them – and what new cinematic aesthetics might follow?
“Cinema on the Phone”
Micro-dramas are not just shorter stories. They are designed for phones and shaped by platforms and follow the mode of “platformisation.”
Platformisation has been one of the most frequently used terms in digital media over the past decade. It is used to describe how more and more social activities, cultural production, and economic exchange have become organised through “platforms” (such as TikTok or Facebook), and increasingly run according to platform rules – metrics, recommendation systems, monetisation designs, and governance structures. Platformisation has also profoundly reshaped micro-drama production, distribution, and content.
Most micro-drama companies, whether they started as IP-based web-fiction firms, internet companies, or traditional film companies, are now trying to develop their own apps rather than rely on social media platforms, where advertising for user acquisition is often the largest cost – frequently far higher than production costs.
In the early phase of market expansion, many micro-dramas acquired audiences and generated revenue quickly through major China platforms Douyin and Kuaishou. But excessive reliance on platform advertising also drove up costs. In extreme cases, the bulk of a drama’s revenue was reportedly spent on social media ads; in some cases, reaching 80-90% of revenue.
For instance, the CEO of Dianzhong Technology – the company behind the breakout title I Became a Stepmother in the 1980s (over US$58 million in peak monthly revenue) – remarked that platform companies took around an 85% share in micro-drama revenue splits. Rights holders (IP) took a slightly larger portion of what remained, and the gross margin for other parties could fall below 3%.
This is why, not long after micro-dramas proved successful, producers began thinking about becoming platforms themselves – first through mini-programmes (apps embedded in WeChat), and then through standalone apps. When China micro-drama companies expanded overseas, they likewise tended to build their own apps with lower ad costs and greater control over acquisition and audience retention (for example, Dianzhong acquiring DramaBox).
This platform logic also affects creativity. When a certain storyline proves profitable, similar versions appear quickly. Production cycles are short and relatively inexpensive, making imitation easy. In this sense, micro-dramas operate much like other digital marketplaces: fast-moving, data-driven, and highly competitive.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence
The rapid development of generative AI has made micro-dramas one of the most radical screen domains for scaled implementation. From 2025 onwards, multiple markets (particularly China and India) have already seen notable AI penetration in micro-drama production; and in the US, a substantial portion of micro-drama investment has reportedly targeted AI micro-dramas.
At present, AI is particularly well suited to a range of animated and animation-like forms, from cartoon styles to more realistic visual outputs. China’s AI animated micro-dramas (manju, a category that can also include some live-action-like titles) have grown quickly. In 2025 Douyin alone released about 37,000 animated micro-drama titles. Some AI animated micro-dramas have exceeded one billion views.
More important than sheer volume is the speed of technical evolution. Within a year, AI animated content moved from static images or simple motion with voice-over towards more refined animation, and even towards live-action-like output. As technology improved and the potential of AI dramas was increasingly recognised, platform companies such as ByteDance reportedly adjusted revenue-sharing mechanisms to favour higher-quality AI-generated micro-dramas. ByteDance introduced an AI drama minimum-guarantee plan of up to US$520,000 per series, and in February 2026, adjusted its revenue-sharing incentives further. Under the new system, six AI forms – live-action, 3D animated manju, 2D animated manju, meme-style dynamic manju, dynamic-narration manju, and static-narration manju – correspond to coefficients of 60, 50, 40, 10, 5, and 1 respectively. In other words, AI live-action revenue share can earn 60 times that of AI static-narration titles.
At the same time, AI is raising serious concerns. If AI can generate scenes, simulate camera movement, and assist with editing, what happens to directors, cinematographers, and production crews? Will creative decisions and input be reorganized to co-exist with autonomous AI output? Will originality actually have any place in this scheme of things, or will output just follow whatever happens to be successful?
There have already been disputes over copyright, particularly when AI systems appear to replicate famous characters or styles. The legal and ethical questions are only beginning. For example, ByteDance’s release of SeeDance 2.0 in early 2026 prompted major Hollywood groups to protest the use of copyrighted characters such as Spider-Man and Darth Vader. Disney and Paramount issued cease-and-desist notices demanding that ByteDance stop using their content; and the Japanese government reportedly announced an investigation into ByteDance over suspected infringement involving Japanese anime copyrights.
Yet AI may not be a purely negative force. While it can threaten certain professional roles, it can also enable creators to realise more ideas more economically and potentially open up new forms of imagination. Shortly after SeeDance 2.0’s release, for instance, Chinese director Jia Zhangke served as producer on an AI short featuring AI versions of himself – one more synthetic, one closer to live-action realism – probing questions of the “real” and the “generated.”
This AI-inflected shift is likely unavoidable for the screen industries, particularly in micro-dramas. It certainly creates disruption, but the key question is how it may also enable new formats, new aesthetics, and new themes.
Rethinking Micro-dramas
Micro-dramas are by no means simply a case of “making films shorter and turning the frame vertical.” The disruption is comprehensive: audience attention structures and emotional needs are shifting; platformised distribution and competition are reshaping production; and AI is further transforming cost structures and the role of labour. While the accompanying risks and uncertainties can feel daunting, there is little doubt that micro-dramas are also creating new opportunities for the media industry and cultivating new audiences.
I have tried here to highlight several aspects and examples that help to understand the current position of micro-dramas. It is not an exhaustive survey and the micro-drama is still a work-in-progress with no definitive answer as to its future and long-term sustainability. Responding to what Roger Garcia writes in the introduction to our programme, perhaps we are at an exciting historical moment: one in which the film industry rebuilds its relationship with audiences through a deeper integration with digital media, while AI opens up new imaginaries for screen production.
Sources of data: DataEye; iiMedia Research; Duanju Zixishi (短剧自习室); China Internet Development Report; China Online Audiovisual Development Research Report (中国网络视听发展研究报告); ByteDance; QuestMobile. This article is edited from research papers and reports produced by Pengnan Hu under the Hong Kong Research Grants Council Junior Research Fellowship Scheme project [UGC/GEN/612/3]. Pengnan Hu is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Research Centre for Creative Arts and Public Value, The Education University of Hong Kong.
Pengan Hu