2-minute TV shows have taken over China. Can they take over the world?

By Stephanie Yang, Los Angeles Times

TAIPEI, Taiwan — A small-town hockey player who’s become a national superstar, a high-school sweetheart who’s scrubbing toilets, and a secret that will change everything:

“He can never find out that he has a daughter!”

The series pilot for “Breaking the Ice” has all the hallmarks of a dramatic, and cheesy, saga of deception and betrayal — all in 132 seconds, the perfect length for the TikTok and Reels generation (the many mini episodes of “Ice” have generated 272.9 million views).

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, I have to know how this ends,’” said Shannon Swicegood, a 31-year-old mom in Columbia, South Carolina, scrolling to watch the next two episodes on the ReelShort app.

The shows, known as micro dramas or vertical dramas, are reminiscent of soap operas or telenovelas, but they’re typically divided into 50-100 tiny chapters. Users can unlock new episodes by watching ads, paying per clip or signing up for unlimited viewing. Swicegood, for example, pays a $200 annual fee to ReelShort for continuous access to the stuff of romance novels: windswept hair, smoldering stares, glittery ingenues and adorable children who may ask: “Are you really my daddy?”

Her husband likes to tease her for watching her “dirty little shows,” with their outlandish and corny plot lines. But Swicegood believes they are filling a void among the streaming networks. “I don’t feel like (the streamers) are coming out with anything that appeals to the demographic I’m in,” Swicegood said. “Instead of sitting down and trying another show about someone solving a crime, I can pull up ReelShorts and just watch two people fall in love.”

Micro dramas emerged in China just as watching short, vertical videos on smartphones became a cornerstone of everyday life. According to DataEye, a digital research firm based in Shenzhen, revenue from micro dramas reached $6.9 billion in China last year, surpassing domestic box office sales for the first time. Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm that tracks mobile app data, reports that short-drama apps outside China made $1.2 billion in 2024, with 60% of that coming from the U.S.

By comparison, the U.S. box office revenue was about $8.75 billion in 2024.

For now, the U.S. micro drama market is dominated by Silicon Valley-based ReelShort, which has outpaced more than 40 international rival apps in mobile downloads and revenue, according to a report last year from Sensor Tower.

Five years ago, another U.S. company, Quibi, famously launched by Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenburg, tried to remake the business of short-form video, but the effort shut down fewer than seven months after its launch. Investors were told that the service failed to attract viewers willing to pay to watch its shows. Will this wave of new platforms be able to reconfigure the global entertainment industry as it struggles with streaming wars, rising production costs and a sluggish return to theaters?

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A funeral for a young woman who was destined to be married off to a divorced pig farmer, a horrified crowd that watches her rise from the dead — and a terrifying realization.

“I’ve traveled through time!”

The first episode of “I Became a Stepmother in the 1980s” got Selina Huang hooked on micro dramas. Their popularity surged during the pandemic, and Huang, a 20-year-old college student in Xi’an, China, became obsessed with the short mobile shows during a holiday break with her family. “The way they could quickly stir up emotions made us so excited that we just couldn’t stop,” she said. “It was like a whole new world for us.”

Their brevity also meant that she could fit a show in during meal time or between classes once she returned to school — though, at times, starting a series before bed would lead to an unintended all-nighter.

She said she spends about $1.40 to $2.75 to access a full show when she’s too impatient to wait through ads and estimates she’s watched more than 100 titles.

Joyce Yen, a producer and former screenwriter in China, moved into the micro drama industry in 2022. Compared to a traditional television or streaming show, vertical dramas are significantly cheaper to produce, he said. A series of about 20 or 30 episodes, each about half an hour long, could cost upwards of $8 million. A micro drama series could be shot for as little as $14,000, though he said the average is closer to $110,000.

Cassandra Yang, founder of a Chinese micro drama content distribution and licensing company called RisingJoy, points out that micro dramas can make a profit within one or two months, compared to movies made for the big screen.

“It is a very exciting signal for us compared with the traditional film and the traditional TV series, because it has more flexibility and more imagination,” said Yang, who was the head of content at Turner Broadcasting System in China before it closed in 2019.

For now, most micro dramas that RisingJoy distributes are made in China, where the nascent industry is the most mature. But eventually, Yang believes, localizing production will be necessary to better expand in promising markets including Japan, Korea and Singapore.

In the meantime, the U.S. is one of the fastest growing markets for micro dramas, along with Indonesia, Brazil, India and Mexico.

“I think every region has great potential,” Yang said. “But I have to say, everyone wants in on the U.S. market, because the ROI is better.”

ReelShort CEO Joey Jia says the greatest advantage of micro dramas is the ability to constantly adapt based on how audiences respond to the platform’s content. He founded the studio seven years ago, but it took a while to figure out what worked. The company pivoted from mobile gaming to interactive stories to mini dramas. Back then, he said the app’s retention rate was near single digits, and 80% of dramas failed to gain an audience.

Producing many variations of similar story structures to see which ones succeeded led the company to a content library that is filled with titles like “The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband” (451.2 million views), “Playing by the Billionaire’s Rules” (26 million views) and “Baby Trapped by the Billionaire” (32.9 million views).

“We know which story can make more money and which story has problems,” Jia said. “That’s the missing portion for traditional Hollywood. They don’t have a feedback loop.”

Jia estimates that ReelShort released almost 200 titles last year, and aims to double that this year. In September, the company opened a studio in Los Angeles. He said that while he believes some content — such as franchises that rely heavily on a fictional world or characters like Star Wars or James Bond — is ill-suited for micro dramas, he hopes to expand into other genres like science fiction or reality TV.

“The biggest question is, ‘How fast can the micro drama evolve?’” he asked. “I still see the short drama as a baby that grew up very fast.”

Katherine Ford, a 47-year-old grade school teacher in Kernersville, North Carolina, would eventually like to see ReelShorts expand its content as well.

After she ran out of English titles, she started watching Asian micro dramas, which she said generally have better acting, writing and production values. She hopes that in the next six months they can branch out more, to period dramas or old Westerns or stories featuring plus-sized women.

For now, she’s paying $5 a week to replay her favorites dozens of times, including “Playing by the Billionaire’s Rules,” “The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband” and “Baby Trapped by the Billionaire.”

Ford’s family also subscribes to Netflix, Disney+ and Peacock. But if it came down to choosing one, Ford doesn’t know if she could give up ReelShort. “I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s my guilty pleasure watch and I enjoy it, even though it’s sometimes really cheesy.”

(Los Angeles Times special correspondent Xin-yun Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.)

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