Emily is a college student by day, but she works the night shift at a strip club to pay her tuition — she doesn’t think anyone will ever figure out her secret, until one day, her mysterious English teacher shows up! Did she recognize him? Will his secret come out? Pay 60 “tokens” to see what happens next, or you can watch an ad, or… buy a VIP pass for $20 per week and skip the ads altogether.
These stories are smooth and exaggerated, bursting with dazzling acting and writing. Yet these “microdramas”—TikTok-like shows with roughly one-minute episodes—are making billions of dollars a year
First popular in China, Microdrama apps are poised for a breakout year in the US app market. According to app intelligence firm Appfigures, ReelShort will reach $1.2 billion in gross consumer spending in 2025, up 119% from 2024; Another top app, Dramabox, generated $276 million in total consumer spending last year, more than doubling its 2024 figure.
The market doesn’t seem to be slowing down. TikTok has just launched its own standalone microdrama app PaindramaAnd a new app from Hollywood veterans has been called Gammatime Just raised $14 million, including checks from angel investors like Alexis Ohanian, Kris Jenner and Kim Kardashian.
It’s amazing to see short-form, scripted drama apps achieving such success when we’re only five years removed from Quibi’s implosion. Quibi wanted to be like Netflix, but with 10-minute episodes designed for on-the-go viewing. Founded by DreamWorks co-founder and former Disney chair Jeffrey Katzenberg, Quibi raised more than $1.75 billion in funding from major Hollywood studios, then produced shows with stars such as Liam Hemsworth, Reese Witherspoon and Anna Kendrick.
No one wanted Quibi, and the app became a punchline because of how massively it flopped. But ReelShort — an app whose top shows include “My Sister Is the Warlord Queen” and “In Love with a Single Farmer-Daddy” — is a hit.
“How are they succeeding where Quibi failed? They’re basically just fans for the female gaze,” Eric Wei, creator economy expert and CEO of Karat Financial, told TechCrunch. “They do romance, where the titles are all like ‘My Alpha.” It’s like ’50 Shades of Grey,’ but for vertical video.
OnlyFans isn’t the best comparison (these shows can be suggestive, though not pornographic), but Wei sells exactly that sexiness. When a story looks like it might be getting hot, you’ll be prompted to view ads or pay to continue. But the payoff is never that compelling, so you keep looking, only to see another pop-up for more money or other obscure in-app currency.
The business model behind these apps replicates the same dark patterns as mobile games They are designed to hook users into free content, offering free in-app currency for logging in every day As people spend more time on the app — which is designed to be addictive — they need more coins or tokens to unlock more episodes of a show, but there’s no way to earn enough to make up for it without shelling out real money.
Sometimes a microdrama is interactive, allowing viewers to choose which route the story takes — but the good option (the woman stands up for her abusive ex) will cost tokens, while the less satisfying (the abusive ex faces no consequences for his actions) is free.
Soon, a hooked viewer can wait and pay for a $20 weekly ad-free pass, which, after a month, will cost more than subscriptions to HBO Max, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and Paramount Plus.
As AI enters the picture, these companies will churn out content at an even more alarming pace. LLMs aren’t capable of writing dramas as prestigious as HBO’s “Legacy” or even a sitcom like “The Big Bang Theory,” but the most successful microdramas are so predictable and formulaic that they don’t actually require much human intelligence and creativity. You’d be surprised how many microdramas start with a scene where a girl wearing glasses gets knocked out by a normal classmate, only to be saved by some popular jock, who notices that she’s really pretty if she takes her glasses off.
PocketFM, the Lightspeed-enabled audio-series platform, has already adopted AI. Last year, it released a tool it calls Co-pilotwhich was trained on thousands of hours of content to understand the “bits” of a formulaic story, helping writers add cliffhangers or plot twists to their stories that make the audience want to see more. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian company Hollywater, which is raised $22 million To finance the microdrama app My Drama, calls itself an “AI-first entertainment network”.
While microdrama may go the way of AI entirely, Sean Atkins, CEO of Dhar Maan Studios, thinks there’s an opportunity for creators as well.
“Think about it — short-form is a little less overhead than long-form, and vertical is even less overhead,” Atkins told TechCrunch. “I think you’ll see a handful of manufacturers start to move significantly into it, especially as they have experience with low-cost manufacturing.”
This company has a great business model on their hands. But it’s one that thrives on short attention spans, in-app purchases, and “cocomelon”-like content for adults.
