Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microseries and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make, and watch, scripted content in the mobile age.

This week, James Franco goes vertical under SAG-AFTRA’s new Verticals Agreement, LumiView signs more than 50 writers and authors to build vertical IP, and creator Sachin Kumar launches a studio around his own voice and audience. Then, we dig into The Great Convergence and what it will actually take for legacy entertainment and the creator economy to understand each other, collaborate, and build something new.

But first…

Notable names continue to enter the MicroSeries space. (And by the way… are we officially calling them MicroSeries now? Because if so, I’m all in.) We’re covering one of the latest examples in our news roundup below. While the names keep changing, it feels like the conversation around “big names entering the space” really hasn’t.

One of the things I love most about this sector is the community that has grown around it. It reminds me of the early creator economy: ambitious, collaborative, and built by people who believed in something before the rest of the world caught on. I understand why established stars entering the space can feel threatening to some. But I think it’s a sign of success, not danger. A healthy creative medium should attract great storytellers from every corner of entertainment.

We humans aren’t particularly fond of change. It introduces uncertainty, and uncertainty is uncomfortable. But as the old saying goes, “The only constant is change.” The people who resist it often get left behind. The people who embrace it are usually the ones who help shape what comes next.

The real challenge isn’t preventing change. It’s making sure that growth is inclusive. The creators who built this medium deserve to stand shoulder to shoulder with the talent that’s only now discovering it. Those shouldn’t be competing stories. They should be the same story.

I’m excited for the day when some of the best actors from film, television, and yes, MicroSeries all share the same set, learning from one another and pushing the medium forward together. I think there will be a unique kind of electricity in that collaboration. That’s a future worth building toward.

Alright, let’s get into it.

James Franco Goes Vertical With Love, Lies & Frank

James Franco stars in Love, Lies & Frank, a new 50-episode microdrama now streaming on Shortical. Like PLAYBACK, it’s also among the first productions under SAG-AFTRA’s new Verticals Agreement, meaning Hollywood talent and its labor infrastructure are arriving together.

LumiView Signs 50+ Writers and Authors to Build Vertical IP

LumiView has brought more than 50 authors and screenwriters into its LumiCreator network, with multiple books already headed for vertical adaptation. The bigger bet: using vertical not just as an endpoint, but as an incubator for IP that can expand into film, publishing and games.

Creator Sachin Kumar Launches His Own Vertical Studio

Creator Sachin Kumar has launched Prema Creative Co. alongside Typecast, a 14-part vertical comedy premiering September 7 on Instagram. Rather than plugging a creator into an existing microdrama machine, Kumar is building one around his own voice and audience.

Australia Is Getting Its First Microdrama Forum

Australia will host its first dedicated Microdrama Forum on August 30, followed by a 48-hour vertical filmmaking challenge in September. It’s another sign that local production ecosystems are beginning to form around the format globally.

Kuku TV Turns the Acting Competition Into a Microdrama

India’s Kuku TV has launched Sabse Bada Dramebaaz, a 50-episode vertical acting competition with Meesho and Tinder attached as brand partners. It’s a useful reminder that vertical storytelling grammar can extend well beyond scripted melodrama.

NAB: Hollywood May Have Something to Learn From Verticals

NAB Show argues that vertical production is becoming a testing ground for faster, lower-risk development and creator-economy thinking, with insights from Susan Rovner, Jana Winograde, Dhar Mann Studios and Scott Brown. Increasingly, the question isn’t how vertical can become more like Hollywood, but what Hollywood can learn from vertical.

Six Major Streamers Have Built Vertical Feeds in Six Months

The Ankler notes that Netflix, Prime Video, Peacock, Disney+, Paramount+ and HBO Max have all introduced some form of vertical short-form feed. Much of it is still clips, but vertical viewing is clearly moving from social platforms into the architecture of traditional streaming.

Canela Media Bets on Free, Bilingual Microdrama

Canela Media announced Zully, a free, ad-supported microdrama app launching this fall with English-, Spanish- and Spanglish-language programming. The model is worth watching for its bilingual focus and advertising-first alternative to aggressive episode paywalls.

Editor’s note: This week, Second Rodeo’s own Franziska Harms wanted to write about her observations on the friction as Hollywood and the Creator Economy collide. I’ll let her take it from here.

Dear Hollywood: Creators Aren’t What You Think

(A.K.A. The Great Misunderstanding of the Great Convergence)

For me, one of the biggest sources of friction in the convergence of legacy and digital is a fundamental misunderstanding of each other. The key to navigating this moment is learning how to translate between two systems that grew up very differently.

If you’re coming from legacy and looking to work with creators, I want to offer a few ways of thinking about them that I believe can help you get more out of those partnerships.

My time working at Second Rodeo has given me a front-row seat to the growing pains on both sides. Overall, I’m incredibly optimistic, and I hope these thoughts resonate with players on both sides.

Throughout, I’ll aim to emphasize what I think you stand to gain from this understanding, and what I think you risk leaving on the table if you don’t reframe. Let’s dive in:

Both sides know their own machine works, because it does.

Legacy built a process that has reliably produced great film and television for decades. Digital built theirs a little differently. The Creator Economy was built through trial by fire at 2x speed. From the outside, that can look confusing, even scary, and therefore easy to misunderstand. But out of those constraints, it has reliably produced massive, engaged audiences with a fraction of the resources.

Both systems produce extraordinary results.

The friction starts when either side assumes the best way to collaborate is to slot the other into the machine it already has, instead of asking whether the machine itself needs to flex.

This moment, mid-convergence, is a prompt to be equally open to building the bridge while we’re standing on it.

I think the clearest place to start untangling this is with how we talk about, and talk to, creators. There are still some understandable assumptions about what a creator is and where their value lies, and those assumptions can leave a lot of the picture out.

It’s worth looking more closely at the categories we’ve inherited, unlearning some of their limitations, and building a more complete understanding of who creators actually are. The earlier we do that, the more value there is for everyone at the table.

Creators ≠ Talent (In the Traditional Sense)

A lot of legacy, and a lot of people making microdramas who came up in legacy, default to treating creators as a talent booking: cast them like you’d cast an actor, slot them into a role, done.

That makes complete sense inside a system built around specialization. But it can also obscure what makes digital-native people valuable in the first place.

Look at almost any working creator’s origin story and you’ll find some version of a one-person company.

They didn’t start with a department for that. They were the writer, director, DP, editor, colorist, graphics person, marketing team, and the one reading every comment. Then they made the executive decision to change the next video based on what they learned, knowing they would also have to implement those changes themselves.

That’s not a stack of resume lines. That’s just what it took to get to the next video.

And even when a creator scales, builds a team, and steps away from that day-to-day execution, that experience doesn’t disappear.

Their instincts tend to be unusually cross-functional because they were formed before the functions were separated.

Their thoughts are many: the edit while they’re writing, the marketing while they’re shooting, the thumbnail as they develop the idea, and always, what the audience will say before the thing even exists.

If you understand this: you gain access to a collaborator whose value may extend far beyond the role you originally hired them for.

If you don’t: you risk using only a small part of what they can actually do.

The Sum > Its Parts

I get the instinct to see this as jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But I don’t think it’s about stacking hats and then measuring the height. It’s in the synthesis.

A creator holds all of that understanding at once. It’s not sequential, it’s simultaneous. Everything happening everywhere, all at once.

That instinct, the ability to hold the whole machine in your head at every step, is the actual asset.

The person I keep coming back to here is Dhar Mann. I don’t know how hands-on he currently is with the day-to-day execution, but he has the understanding that comes from synthesized, soup-to-nuts experience, and that’s what interests me.

The closest legacy comparison might be an auteur filmmaker, and even that undersells it, because an auteur usually has a studio’s infrastructure behind them. Creators built theirs, so they’re used to owning the whole machine.

If you understand this: you get the benefit of integrated thinking. Decisions about story, audience, packaging, production, and distribution can inform one another much earlier.

If you don’t: you risk breaking the person into their component skills and missing the synthesis that made them successful in the first place. You price and hire for individual skills in isolation, potentially missing the full commercial upside of a creator’s existing audience and creative ecosystem..

The Value You Might Be Leaving on the Table

So if you’re a legacy producer bringing a creator into a microdrama, I’d ask: are you casting them, or are you leaving value on the table by only casting them?

And that question isn’t unique to acting. If you’re bringing a digital person on to direct, are you only slotting them into the traditional director’s chair? If you’re bringing one on to edit, are you just handing them a timeline and a deadline?

Whatever the role, there’s often far more interconnected experience sitting at the table than the job title suggests.

It’s worth asking why Hollywood is turning to creators in the first place. They’ve unlocked something the traditional system hasn’t been able to replicate on its own.

Here’s a small exercise: pick up your phone right now and try to post something that performs well online. If that makes you uneasy, I’d gently push you to sit with why. If it doesn’t scare you at all, I’d challenge you to actually try it. (...and lowkey, if it does well, shoot me a DM and I’ll eat my words and start picking your brain on how we can collab.)

Creators also understand their own audience in a way nobody else in the room does. That knowledge isn’t just useful for the creative. It’s enormously valuable when it comes time to actually reach that audience.

If you understand this: you gain a live source of creative, audience, packaging, and distribution intelligence while you’re actually building the thing.

If you don’t: you risk hiring a creator for their ability to reach an audience, without giving them a voice in the decisions that will determine whether that audience actually shows up.

Buy-In, Not Just a Booking

The way to unlock all of that is buy-in, not just a booking.

That buy-in might come through creative authority, participation in development, ownership, backend, or another clearly defined stake.

The exact structure will vary. The principle doesn’t.

If you’re bringing someone in because of the ecosystem they’ve built, give them enough agency and responsibility to actually apply what they know.

A creator who’s bought in will fight for the project like it’s their own. Because, in some meaningful way, it is.

That’s worth more than any marketing budget trying to recreate the reach and trust they’ve already earned.

Get this right, and you gain deeper commitment, access to the creator’s real expertise, and a partner invested in the project’s success long after their contractual deliverable.

Get it wrong, and you risk buying the creator’s face while leaving their audience insight, creative instincts, and entrepreneurial energy outside the room.

The Translators

This is part of why people who have worked deeply in both systems can be particularly useful right now.

It’s something we think about a lot at Second Rodeo, and something I’m learning from Scott Brown, who I consider an authority on the subject of how to translate between traditional production culture and digital-native production without assuming either side has a monopoly on the right answer.

But I don’t think translators are the permanent solution.

If this convergence keeps accelerating, eventually we all have to become a little more bilingual.

The questions I’m asking are: which parts of each system are essential, which are contextual, and which can evolve? Because it’s…

A Two-Way Street

There is plenty digital can learn here too.

Legacy production has decades of hard-won knowledge around development, collaboration, labor, safety, financing, legal structures, craft specialization, large-team coordination, and maintaining quality at scales many creators have never managed.

Those systems didn’t appear arbitrarily.

But creators may not automatically understand the reason behind a process developed for a very different production environment. And the same can be said the other way around.

We need to distinguish between a hard-won best practice and an inherited habit.

Digital shouldn’t reject structure simply because it came from legacy. Legacy shouldn’t reject a different process simply because it doesn’t look familiar.

Both sides should be able to ask the same question:

What problem is this solving?

If you understand this: you get to combine decades of institutional knowledge with the speed, feedback loops, audience intimacy, and adaptability of digital.

If you don’t: you risk importing the weaknesses of one system into the other while accidentally filtering out the strengths.

Bottom Line

The convergence isn’t a hostile takeover in either direction, and it isn’t something we can permanently hand off to a few translators fluent in both worlds.

It’s the blueprints of two machines that both work, meeting in the middle to build something new together.

If we can get better at seeing what each side actually brings to the table, the next generation of entertainment doesn’t have to choose between the two systems.

That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

Subscribe now

Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microseries and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—scripted content in the mobile age.

This week, Disney brings creator-made vertical video into Disney+, consumer brands push further into original entertainment, ReelShort is projected to cross $1 billion in annual revenue, and Snap draws a firmer line around fully AI-generated content. Then, we dig into Scott’s time on The Vertical Buzz, where he and Buzz took a deep dive into the vertical industry.

But first…

I’ve been thinking a lot about collaboration lately.

It’s a word that has always been at the heart of the creator economy. And really, it’s at the heart of every movie that’s ever been made.

But I think collaboration has a new importance right now, because the collaboration that matters most may be the one happening between two worlds.

Ben Odell has been documenting this “great convergence” incredibly well for quite some time. And as we prepare to see more companies enter digital, vertical, and the creator economy in new ways, I think it’s important that we approach those partnerships as true collaborations, with the staunch belief that both sides have something the other needs.

The best partnerships are the ones where each side brings something the other cannot. We can go so much farther together than we can alone.

So, to the legacy entertainment readers of this newsletter, I’d just offer a question to consider as you embark on these deals: Are the structures in place making it easy for creator-economy collaborators to bring all of their wisdom to the table? And is there anything holding you back from receiving it?

And to those of us in the creator economy: Are we entering these collaborations with the same openness? Are we ready to learn from the enormous body of craft, knowledge, and tradition that has been built by the American entertainment industry?

I believe the future is going to be forged on that common ground.

An extraordinary amount of innovation and knowledge has accumulated on both sides. In some ways, as much has changed in the last ten years as in the hundred before them.

So, to everyone making deals, building companies, creating shows, and trying to win in an uncertain future, I think it’s worth asking ourselves, myself included: Are we being the best collaborators we can possibly be? Across creative execution, business, strategy, and all the moments in between?

Because if the creator economy has taught me anything, it’s that the biggest winners are often the greatest collaborators.

All right, let’s get into it.

Disney and TikTok Bring Creator Videos Into Disney+

Disney and TikTok have struck a global deal giving participating creators access to assets from hundreds of Disney films and series. Opt-in fan videos will appear on TikTok and inside Disney+’s existing Verts feed, beginning with a U.S. pilot in the coming months.

For vertical, the bigger signal is that Disney is bringing creator-made content into its own streaming product, using social video to deepen fandom and drive discovery. Coming after its OpenAI agreement ended when Sora shut down, it also keeps human creators, rather than fully generated content, at the center of the experiment.

DoorDash Names WME Its Entertainment Agency of Record

DoorDash has hired WME to lead its entertainment marketing and advisory work as the delivery company expands its relationships across Hollywood.

It is another sign that consumer brands increasingly see entertainment as more than a sponsorship opportunity. Paired with Xfinity’s launch below, the move suggests original content and cultural partnerships are becoming a larger part of the brand-marketing toolkit.

ReelShort Forecast to Pass $1 Billion and Turn a Profit

Media Partners Asia forecasts that ReelShort will generate $1.05 billion in revenue in 2026, up 34 percent, while moving from an estimated $12 million loss in 2025 to roughly $40 million in net profit. The firm expects the wider microdrama market outside China to reach $3.6 billion this year and $9.5 billion by 2031.

These are projections, not audited results, but the proposed path to profitability matters: stronger franchises, cheaper subscriber acquisition through telecom partners, more direct billing, and faster creative testing. That is a shift from growth through paid acquisition toward retention, recognizable IP, and owned distribution.

Xfinity Builds a Vertical Reality Competition for College Creators

Xfinity’s Best in Class is a seven-episode reality competition made specifically for Instagram and TikTok. Hosted by Katie Feeney and produced by NBCUniversal’s Rock Studios, it follows six college creators competing for a six-figure Xfinity partnership.

The series is less a traditional campaign than an original entertainment format built around the product and released where its audience already spends time. It is a clear example of a non-entertainment brand using vertical storytelling as the marketing itself, rather than the material surrounding it.

Snap Removes Fully AI-Generated Videos From Spotlight Recommendations

Snap says wholly AI-generated videos are no longer eligible for recommendation on Spotlight. They can still be posted, while videos edited with Snapchat’s AI tools remain eligible and will carry transparency labels.

The distinction matters. Snap is not rejecting AI wholesale. It is drawing a line around fully generated volume inside its discovery system. That echoes YouTube’s push against low-quality, repetitive AI content, which we covered in July, and suggests platforms increasingly see mass-produced synthetic video as a recommendation-quality problem rather than a growth strategy.

Scott on The Vertical Buzz

This week, Scott joined Buzz Leer on The Vertical Buzz to talk about where vertical entertainment is headed and what the industry can learn from the creator economy.

Buzz is an actor, host, and vertical veteran who has worked across dozens of productions, and he’s built The Vertical Buzz into a great forum for the people shaping the space. Huge thanks to Buzz for having us.

You can watch the full interview here. Below are a few highlights that capture a lot of what we believe about the space, with takeaways for filmmakers and dealmakers alike.

Why Now?

Scott breaks down why he believes the scripted digital boom is happening now, using Dhar Mann as a case study. He also talks creative ambition, social platforms as a meritocracy for scripted content, and why sometimes the best creative move is taking a break.

The People Behind the Work

Scott talks about how much of his success comes from finding the right collaborators and empowering them. He and Buzz dig into directing actors and crews, boldness, pacing, and why retention ultimately comes down to creating a promise the audience wants fulfilled.

Storytelling Is a Technology

Scott gets into his love of Sidney Lumet, book recommendations, and his directing prep process. He also explores the difference between legacy and digital storytelling, breaks down a Project Hail Mary retention mechanism (spoilers!), and shares what he sees as the biggest opportunity in vertical today.

Thanks again to Buzz for having us. You can find more from The Vertical Buzz here, follow Buzz on Instagram and LinkedIn, or watch the full conversation on YouTube.

That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

Subscribe now

Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microseries and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—scripted content in the mobile age.

This week, TikTok tests the limits of microdrama pricing, HBO Max brings AI-assisted vertical discovery into its mobile app, and a new sports company asks what happens when the competition itself is built for the feed. Then, we dig into new audience data from HOLYWATER TECH and Owl & Co, and what it suggests about a category whose viewer profile is still changing in real time.

But first…

This was a wild week in vertical behind the scenes at Second Rodeo, but we still want to bring something valuable to your inbox. In the spirit of brevity being an important value, a Haiku:

The Audience Longs

For Moments They Won’t Forget

And a Secret Depth

And I still believe this is true.

Alright, let’s get into it!

TikTok Quietly Tests a $20-a-Week Microdrama App

TikTok has been running a paid microdrama app called LimeShorts in the U.S. since March. The app mirrors the freemium model of category leaders ReelShort and DramaBox: free opening episodes, followed by a paywall. Full access currently costs $19.99 a week or $200 a year, while digital coin packages range from $5 for 500 coins to $70 for 8,500. LimeShorts replaced ByteDance’s earlier fiction-reading app, Mytopia.

Its catalog currently comes entirely from third-party partners, and a TikTok spokesperson said pricing may still change as the company tests different options. The app sits alongside TikTok’s free PineDrama app and a dedicated microdrama feed being tested inside the main TikTok app.

This means TikTok is now running free, freemium, and premium experiments in the format simultaneously. The U.S. microdrama industry generated roughly $1.4 billion in 2025, according to consulting firm Owl & Co, and TikTok’s multi-tier approach reads as an attempt to find out which price point that audience will actually bear.

HBO Max Dips a Toe Into Vertical, Powered by AI

As part of two new mobile discovery features, HBO Max rolled out a vertical, scrollable feed called HBO Max Shorts this week.

The feed surfaces trailers, bonus material, and iconic or memorable scenes from the platform’s library to help users discover something to watch. It is currently being tested with select iOS users in the U.S.

Crucially, these are not original vertical dramas. The clips are designed to move viewers toward the full-length titles they came from, a discovery strategy Netflix is also using with its Clips feed.

The clips are generated with help from an in-house AI tool that uses scene-level metadata to comb through thousands of hours of programming and suggest potentially high-impact moments. Human editors then decide which scenes to use and how to verticalize them.

World 1 Wants to Build “Microsports” for the Feed

World 1, a sports-entertainment company backed by Mark Cuban and built with a founding group that includes ten Olympic medalists, has unveiled Microsports: entirely original athletic competitions where world titles can be won or lost in roughly 30 seconds, designed specifically for vertical video.

CEO Brett Morris argues that the modern sports industry was built around television, even as audiences increasingly moved toward their phones. Rather than adapting legacy competitions into shorter clips, World 1 is attempting to build a new category of sports engineered for the feed from the beginning.

The company is starting with two competitions, Fastest and Strongest, with plans to develop more.

The Verge: Vertical Video Is Eating Every Platform

In a column tying together many of the week’s threads, The Verge argues that TikTok’s vertical format is spreading across YouTube, Instagram, streaming services, and nearly every other major media platform as their products converge around mobile-first viewing.

It is the connective thesis behind everything else in this roundup. HBO Max is reformatting its library into scroll-friendly clips. A sports startup is engineering entire competitions for the feed. TikTok is testing multiple ways to package and monetize serialized vertical storytelling.

The underlying format war may already have been decided. What remains is the fight over who owns the audience once they are there.

The Category Is Still Being Built: What HOLYWATER’s Data Actually Tells Us

A Vertical Bloom deep dive into The State of Microdrama 2026, shared with us by HOLYWATER TECH.

HOLYWATER TECH, the company behind live-action app My Drama and AI-generated app My Muse, passed us a copy of The State of Microdrama 2026, a joint report with Owl & Co.

The report combines four data sources: internal product data from My Drama and My Muse, a self-selected in-app survey of 2,737 self-identified U.S. microdrama fans reached through My Drama, and a separate self-selected My Muse survey with 34,406 responses. The reporting windows vary by dataset. My Muse product data generally covers December 2025 through May 2026, while some of the My Drama demographic data extends back to Q2 2024.

It was prepared for the Vertical Media Summit 2026 before HOLYWATER decided to release it publicly, with Owl & Co founder Hernan Lopez writing the foreword.

Several outlets have already run through the top-line findings, but we wanted to focus on the numbers we have kept coming back to, and what they might mean beyond the report itself.

1. The Audience Isn’t Settled Yet. Not Really.

The data: Roughly 65% of the My Drama users surveyed have been watching microdrama for less than a year. Break that down further: 31% started less than three months ago, another 35% started three to twelve months ago, and only 12% have been watching for more than two years.

By the report’s own framing, the category is “still being formed.”

That might be a throwaway statistic if new viewers behaved like new viewers usually do: tentatively, at low intensity, and with a high likelihood of drifting away. The current users represented here do not. Eighty-two percent of the under-three-month cohort already opens My Drama daily, the same rate as viewers who have been around for two years.

It is the same pattern showing up elsewhere in the report. Men went from 1.1% to 30.3% of My Drama’s monthly active users with known gender in seven quarters, a 28-fold increase. The share represented by viewers aged 22 to 27 among known-age monthly active users more than tripled in five quarters.

Among the current users captured in this report, later arrivals are not behaving like tourists.

Our take: This is the single most important finding in the report because it reframes what “the microdrama audience” even means.

There is no stable, legible microdrama viewer to design around yet. There is a viewer profile from 2024, women aged 35 to 54 watching at night, that the report itself describes as a caricature. Underneath it is a fast-moving population that increasingly does not look like that.

Any platform, studio, or brand treating today’s engagement data as a fixed target may be optimizing for a group that could represent a much smaller portion of the audience a year from now.

The more useful implication is about where the immediate growth opportunity sits. The report does not prove that retention is solved. It surveys current My Drama users rather than tracking everyone who has ever tried the category and churned, and a voluntary in-app survey is naturally more likely to capture engaged viewers.

It does, however, suggest that frequent use can form quickly among people who make it into the app. Eighty-two percent of users who began watching microdrama within the previous three months already open My Drama daily.

That should push the industry to think just as seriously about sampling as optimization: getting unfamiliar audiences, including men, older Gen Z viewers, and non-romance audiences, to try the format in the first place.

The platforms that win the next eighteen months may be the ones that expand who samples microdrama, not only the ones that optimize for the people already watching.

2. The Audience Peaks on Sunday Night

The data: The highest-activity window on My Drama is Sunday between 8 and 10 p.m. local time. The lowest activity occurs on weekday mornings between 3 and 9 a.m.

Our take: This is our inference, not the report’s.

It is hard not to notice that My Drama’s highest-activity window overlaps with the Sunday-evening slot legacy television spent decades cultivating for appointment viewing.

The technology and episode lengths have changed, but the psychology may not have. Sunday evening remains a natural period for escapism before the workweek begins, whether that means settling in for a prestige drama or binge-scrolling an entire vertical series in bed.

It is a useful reminder that this audience may not be inventing entirely new viewing behavior. It could be bringing very old habits into a new format.

3. Adapted IP Is the Strongest Lever in the Report, With One Real Asterisk

The data: Forty-one percent of respondents ranked “stories adapted from books, films, or shows you already know” first among four things that would get them to watch more.

That placed adapted IP ahead of underserved genres, famous actors, and knowing that friends are watching.

The report calls it “the single most powerful lever for the audience overall.”

The asterisk is that, within the survey’s male subgroup, adapted IP mattered at roughly half the average rate. It is one major lever where a rapidly growing part of the audience diverges sharply from the existing base.

Our take: This validates a trend we have already been covering.

WWE’s ReelShort collaboration and the vertical reformat of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger are not simply opportunistic one-offs. They are recent examples of companies testing whether recognition can reduce the friction of choosing what to watch inside an unfamiliar format.

The report supports adapted IP as a lever for getting existing My Drama users to watch more. microdrama.

Expect the IP-licensing conversation in vertical to accelerate. Familiar worlds, characters, books, films, and entertainment brands give audiences a trusted entry point into additional stories.

But the male-audience finding is an important qualification. Adapted IP may be the strongest overall lever without being the universal answer.

The category is growing, but it is not settled. The audience is becoming habitual before it becomes predictable. The opportunity is not simply to serve the microdrama viewer better.

It is to help discover who that viewer could be.

That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

Subscribe now

Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microseries and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—scripted content in the mobile age.

It’s been a wild week for vertical. The Daily Show is making a microdrama. Two Hollywood-backed studios launched on the same day. BuzzFeed committed to more than 100 titles. MIPCOM carved out dedicated real estate for the category. And an AI chatbot company decided episodes needed a chat window.

No deep dive this week. Just the headlines that matter, what they mean for the format, and a Weekly Watch I have a lot to say about.

But first-

There’s a lot of action out there right now, though I realize that for many people, it doesn’t feel that way.

For many of the actors and creative professionals in this space, production has slowed considerably since the boom of summer of ’25. People aren’t working every week or booking 30 shows a year. That kind of whiplash is real, and so is the impact on people’s livelihoods.

But from where I sit, and the meetings I take, I believe we’re experiencing a correction, not a collapse.

I believe a second wave is coming, driven by new players and some truly massive platforms that are poised to change the scale and reach of the vertical space.

I’ve been optimistic about verticals since I first discovered them. I can’t promise that the days of working 52 weeks a year are coming back (and, frankly, it’s worth asking whether they should.)

I read something by Truffaut about the creative mind needing to lay fallow. That it’s actually good for short periods of inactivity. Let’s all take a creative breath in.

Because I do believe over the next 6-8 months we’re about to see a major expansion in the genres, formats, and kinds of stories this space can support.

Most importantly, I believe we’ll continue to see the quality evolve—on the audience’s terms.

And we need our creative minds ready for these evolutions.

So yes, I remain optimistic.

Hang in there, friends. I genuinely believe the next chapter could be much bigger than the last.

Alright, let’s get into it.

Comedy Central Is Making a White House Microdrama, and It’s Aiming the Joke at the Format Itself

Source: TheWrap and Paramount Press Express

The Daily Show is producing its first-ever microdrama: Two Billionaires Fight to Dominate the Country… And My Heart! The vertical series spoofs both U.S. politics and the soapy, over-the-top DNA of microdrama itself, complete with a sleepy president, warring tech titans, and a love triangle.

This is a cultural validation milestone. When a 30-year-old satire institution decides the microdrama format is recognizable enough to parody, that’s a signal the tropes, enemies-to-lovers, absurd power struggles, breathless cliffhangers, have entered the mainstream vocabulary. It is the same way sitcoms began spoofing reality TV once everyone already knew the beats.

It’s also a hedge and a stress test. If audiences laugh with the format rather than at it, that’s free marketing for every straight-faced microdrama on the app store. If it reads as mockery, it could accelerate the “guilty pleasure” stigma some in the industry are trying to shed as they chase premium positioning.

Either way, we’re watching to see whether other legacy comedy and news brands follow, testing the validity of the format’s entrance into the zeitgeist.

BuzzFeed Studios Goes All In: 100 Microdrama Titles, Starting With a Gangland Romeo & Juliet

Source: BuzzFeed Studios

BuzzFeed Studios and muVpix, the flagship platform of BlackForge Distribution, have struck a deal to produce more than 100 microdrama titles over the next two years.

The partnership kicks off with Romeo & Juliet, Reimagined, which transplants Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers into the criminal underworld of modern-day Los Angeles. The series was shot in both horizontal and vertical formats, and the larger partnership will span original IP, reimagined classics, and “shoppable” formats built natively for TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, FAST/CTV, and muVpix’s own platform.

This is a scale play, not a toe-dip. A legacy digital media brand committing to more than 100 titles signals the format has moved past “experiment with one show and see” and into full-pipeline production, the same maturation curve linear television and streaming went through.

Two details are worth flagging for the industry. First, the dual horizontal-and-vertical shoot strategy suggests studios are increasingly hedging their format bets rather than committing purely to vertical, treating “vertical” as a distribution layer rather than the entire identity of a show.

Second, “reimagined classics” as a stated content pillar, adapting public-domain IP like Shakespeare, is a smart way to sidestep licensing costs while banking on built-in name recognition. It is a strategy other studios chasing scale will likely copy.

New Short Media Is a New Big Player

Source: Deadline

Veteran producers Alon Shtruzman, the former CEO of Keshet International, and Scott Einbinder have launched New Short Media, a vertical-storytelling studio operating alongside their existing 5X Media banner.

Backed by a “consortium of investors,” the studio is explicitly positioning itself around “brand-name content creators, actors and creative talent,” premium production values, and an early slate that pushes beyond conventional romance into action, thriller, comedy, crime, and reality.

Notably, the launch landed on the same day as another Hollywood-backed vertical studio debut: vertTV, a subscription platform and studio launched by veteran producers Jeffrey Schenck, Barry Barnholtz, and Peter Sullivan.

The genre-diversification angle is the real story here. Microdrama’s breakout success in the United States has largely been built on romance and soap-opera melodrama. This studio, and others like it, are explicitly betting that the format can carry action, crime, and comedy just as well once premium production and recognizable talent are layered in.

The clustering of launches also suggests we may be entering a land-grab moment. Investors and veteran producers could be moving in parallel because they all see the same window, and perhaps see it beginning to close.

MIPCOM Cannes Builds a Whole Track Around Microdrama and Vertical Content

Source: MIPCOM Cannes

MIPCOM Cannes, the major international television and content market running from October 12 through October 15, has unveiled a significantly expanded 2026 program built around vertical storytelling.

The program includes an invitation-only Global Microdrama & Vertical Leaders’ Summit, a live recording of The Media Odyssey podcast dedicated to “premium vertical television,” and a new Vertical Content Speed Matchmaking category on the market’s official platform. The category will join its existing Scripted and Unscripted matchmaking tracks.

Character.ai Wants You to Chat With Your Microdrama’s Characters

Source: Character.ai and The Verge

Character.ai has launched (c.ai) series, a collection of original short-form vertical series with a twist. After watching an episode, users over 18 can open a chat with its characters, ask questions, revisit moments, explore relationships, or roleplay new storylines within the show’s world.

This is one of the clearest attempts yet to bolt an interactive layer onto the microdrama format, and it is coming from a company that did not originate inside the existing vertical-video ecosystem.

Character.ai already has a fandom-heavy audience accustomed to creating characters, roleplaying, and building fictional worlds. That makes this as much a retention play as a content play. The episode attracts viewers, but the chat experience gives them a reason to remain inside the platform after the credits.

If it works, it opens a genuinely new lane. Platforms like ReelShort currently have no equivalent chatbot layer, and a “talk to your fave after the episode” feature could deepen the kind of parasocial engagement that serialized storytelling already encourages.

But it’s worth treating this one with some real caution. Character.ai has faced significant scrutiny over the way its chatbots have interacted with younger users. The company says the character-chat feature for these series is limited to over-18 users, but layering emotionally engaging serialized video onto AI companionship still creates meaningful questions around moderation, age verification, and safety.

Return Offer — Watch Club

Let me say it plainly: Watch Club might be one of the smartest plays in vertical right now, and Return Offer is the proof of concept.

The premise: A cohort of college interns competes for a full-time return offer at a high-stress AI startup, and it gets toxic and ruthless fast. If you’re a fan of SKAM, Industry, or Survivor, which, full disclosure, I absolutely am, this is your show.

The Platform Play

Let’s start with the macro read of the platform, which is that Watch Club is building specifically for a YA audience, and that’s a smart bet.

There used to be an entire ecosystem built around that demographic: dedicated cable channels, appointment viewing, and a whole cultural infrastructure. That infrastructure has largely evaporated. Because that audience has bifurcated across a million places on the internet, nothing has stepped in to capture them in a monoculture-type way.

Watch Club is making a direct run at it, and Return Offer is a well-executed big swing.

What I love is that this show refuses to talk down to its audience. It wears its SKAM inspiration well, not just in tone, but in the way it engages with situations that feel true to that age group, whether it is something they are currently navigating or something on the horizon that they are excited about or bracing for.

It handles this without ever getting gratuitous or “adult” for the sake of it and, even more critically, without being cringey. It respects the stakes through its characters’ eyes, which is exactly why it plays just as well for an older audience.

There are a few “The Summer I Turned Pretty moments,” my term for a moment that reminds you, yes, this is a YA show, but they are the exception, not the engine. The show mostly resists leaning on YA tropes in a way that would alienate a discerning younger viewer looking for something with real substance.

While I can’t recommend it to viewers under 21, I also know that 16- or 17-year-old me would have desperately wanted to watch it. That tension may be part of what makes it work. It feels made for a younger audience without feeling sanitized for them.

The SKAM DNA

The other big SKAM borrow, which I genuinely adore, is the structure.

Episodes are broken up by in-world social-media posts: an Instagram Story here, a LinkedIn post there, each one letting you dip further into the universe between chapters.

And this goes a layer deeper than you might assume. Per Watch Club’s own app description, these character posts go up in real time as the story unfolds, woven directly into the ongoing narrative rather than existing as preloaded bonus content.

That clever mechanic that made SKAM so innovative is perfect for the audience Watch Club is targeting: digitally native Zoomers. It has a Big Brother Live Feeds-style immediacy to it, and it activates real-time FOMO. Miss the update and you have missed a piece of the story as the fandom experienced it.

It’s a smart way to keep an already-engaged audience checking back outside the episode window, teasing future plot, and capitalizing on parasocial relationships. The retention, engagement, and community strategies are richly layered here.

The Craft

The character work is great. Nobody here is a walking stereotype.

You can see the recognizable archetypes the writers are building from, but each character gets fleshed out as an individual with real throughlines of motivations, weaknesses, strengths, goals, and fears.

The writing is naturalistic, which does mean it runs a little slower than your average microdrama. But it’s still considerably faster and more plot-dense than a typical television show.

The camera work is fun, too. It plays with keyframes and handheld chaos to give the show a distinctly digital feel. Sometimes that language heightens the comedy in an almost The Office-style way. In the tenser moments, the same instability starts to feel closer to The Bear. It is a smart visual bridge between internet-native storytelling and television craft.

The romance isn’t overwrought. It’s well-written and genuinely complex, playing with power dynamics and a paramour trope that has real flirtatious, toxic spice to it, running in parallel with a competing slow-burn romance.

The Vibes

(Yes, I’m Giving the Vibes Their Own Section)

I have to give a moment to the color grading, because this show is just nice to look at.

Paired with moments in the score that lean into that Nathan Micay-esque “tech startup” electronic sound, it adds up to a real vibe.

Bottom Line

I’m genuinely excited to see what else comes out of Watch Club.

If you are too, the company is currently hiring screenwriters and casting actors for upcoming projects.

That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

Subscribe now

Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microseries and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—scripted content in the mobile age.

This week, YouTube-born franchises make their way to Netflix, WWE enters the microdrama ring, a Hitchcock classic is recut for phones, and RoseBerry launches a new home for original and repurposed vertical television.

But First-

Editor’s note: This week, Second Rodeo’s own Stacy Howard wanted to write about her steadfast belief and love of horror and its potential in the vertical space. I’ll let her take it from here:

THE FUTURE WAITS IN THE DARK

by Stacy Howard

Horror may be the most versatile genre in storytelling. It reaches into parts of the human psyche that few other genres can. Since the dawn of humanity, we’ve been fascinated by what we don’t understand. At its best, horror explores our deepest fears, our darkest impulses, and the things we’d rather not admit about ourselves.

Lately, horror has been impossible to ignore. Even seven and nine weeks after the releases of Backrooms and Obsession, respectively, both films were still generating seven figures at the weekly box office—a reminder that great horror doesn’t just open well, it has the ability to sustain audience interest long after opening weekend.

It’s also one of the industry’s greatest proving grounds. Some of the most influential filmmakers working today got their start in horror, where limited budgets often demand exceptional craftsmanship, creative problem-solving, and bold storytelling. It’s a genre that consistently rewards originality.

Just as importantly, horror continues to be one of the healthiest businesses in entertainment. Low- to mid-budget horror films regularly deliver some of the highest returns on investment in Hollywood, they remain remarkably resilient at the box office even as audience tastes shift, and horror fans are among the most loyal genre communities, eagerly embracing new voices and original ideas.

That’s why we believe horror matters so much for vertical storytelling. Its immediacy demands it. It’s structure can take it to new heights.

If premium vertical series are going to become a lasting entertainment medium, they need genres that push creators creatively while giving audiences something they can’t stop watching. The tension, cliffhangers, mystery, and emotional intensity that define great horror also happen to be the building blocks of great episodic vertical storytelling.

The question isn’t whether horror belongs in verticals. It’s who will truly unlock it first.

Who will discover the storytelling language that makes vertical horror feel native to the medium? Who will build the first breakout franchise that audiences can’t put down?

My bet is it’ll be the people willing to take a risk on something they truly love.

I plan to be one of them. Who’s coming with me?

Good Mythical Morning Expands From YouTube to Netflix

Beginning September 7, new episodes of Good Mythical Morning, Mythical Kitchen and Last Meals will arrive on Netflix the same day they publish on YouTube, suggesting the next phase of creator-to-streamer deals may be less about leaving digital platforms behind and more about extending proven internet franchises across both ecosystems.

WWE Steps Into Microdrama With ReelShort

WWE is partnering with ReelShort on an original live-action vertical starring Drew McIntyre, Joe Hendry and Jacob Fatu alongside microdrama regulars Marc Herrmann and Chase Mattson. It is a natural meeting of two forms built around heightened characters, serialized conflict and cliffhangers, and another sign that major fandom businesses see vertical as an extension of the core franchise.

Hitchcock’s The Lodger Is Recut for the Phone

Tattle TV has divided Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 silent thriller into short vertical chapters, using AI-assisted reframing to bring the classic to mobile audiences. Less a blueprint than a provocative experiment, it raises the increasingly relevant question of whether legacy libraries can find new life through format translation, or whether vertical still demands stories built for the medium from the start.

Epis, From RoseBerry Media

Epis is entering the market with a different version of the premium vertical pitch. Rather than building its catalog almost entirely around original romance and revenge dramas, the app combines new mobile-first productions with established television programs adapted into short vertical episodes. Its launch catalog includes more than 100 titles across drama, reality, dating, documentary and true crime, with library partners including A+E Global Media, All3Media International, Banijay Rights, Cineflix Rights and Fremantle. The strategy positions vertical as more than a production format. It becomes a new distribution window for existing television IP, while giving RoseBerry a place to test which genres and properties translate successfully to mobile. The opportunity is clear: unlock new audiences and revenue from catalogs that already exist. The larger test will be whether audiences experience these adaptations as a natural evolution of the original programs, rather than television compressed to fit a smaller screen.

The Platforms Are Starting to Look More Like Home

For the past two years, the vertical drama boom has largely been defined by dedicated apps such as ReelShort and DramaBox. These platforms did more than prove there was an audience for premium, serialized, mobile-first storytelling. They built the production pipelines, recommendation systems and payment models that helped establish an entirely new entertainment category.

But this week offered another reminder that the category is beginning to spread beyond those original borders.

Netflix is bringing three established YouTube franchises onto its service without taking them away from YouTube. WWE is entering microdrama through an original partnership with ReelShort. Epis is combining original vertical productions with BBC and Channel 4 programs reformatted for mobile. Tattle TV has attempted a similar experiment with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 film The Lodger.

YouTube, meanwhile, is approaching the same shift from another direction. As more automated content reaches the platform, the company has said it is working to reduce the spread of low-quality, repetitive AI content while preserving the openness that allowed its creator ecosystem to grow.

At first glance, these moves do not seem particularly related. Together, they suggest that digital-first and mobile-native entertainment is becoming less isolated from the rest of the media business.

That does not mean dedicated vertical apps are being replaced. Those companies continue to finance productions, develop talent and refine the storytelling and monetization systems that made the format viable. Larger platforms bring something different: enormous existing audiences, established creator communities and recommendation systems designed to connect content with viewers who may not already be looking for it.

Other creator industries have moved through versions of this transition. YouTube’s 2017 “adpocalypse” demonstrated both the scale and vulnerability of building on an open platform, as a shift in advertiser confidence quickly reshaped monetization and the kinds of content that could thrive. TikTok later replaced its Creator Fund with a Creator Rewards Program prioritizing original videos longer than one minute, changing its incentives as audience behavior matured. In music, artists releasing directly through distributors have grown faster than the wider recorded-music market, expanding the paths available to creators without eliminating labels.

Vertical may ultimately follow a similarly mixed path.

Some projects will continue to thrive inside closed, purpose-built apps. Others may benefit from open platforms where audiences, creators and fandoms already exist. Legacy libraries may find new distribution windows, while original productions move more easily between mobile apps, social platforms and traditional streamers.

For creators and studios, this may be the most encouraging part of the moment. More platforms experimenting with vertical means more potential business models, more routes to viewers and more freedom to find the right home for each story.

The question is no longer whether premium vertical storytelling belongs in the entertainment landscape.

The more interesting question is where it will feel most at home.

That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

Subscribe now

Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microseries and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—scripted content in the mobile age.

This week, an Ode to Open-gate, Larry Namer declaring that vertical is Hollywood’s future at VidCon, and Rachel Sennott returning to her digital roots with The Scene.

But First-

I’m partially in the business of reading tea leaves. At least that’s the closest metaphor for myself, and for my team over the past few years to describe the practice of interpreting the trends of an emerging market.

Two years ago, it was our observation about the then-unnamed world of short dramas (the ones we all now call microdramas) that put us in the position we’re in today.

The tricky thing about the future is that history doesn’t repeat itself. It just has a habit of rhyming.

I felt that rhyme today.

The Emmy nominations came out this morning. Sure, the short-form categories are broad. But when I look at who actually got nominated, what I really see is a proliferation of content and a recognition that is independent of vertical or horizontal format.

Three of the four noms in short-form are platformed on youtube. Kareem Rahma, the guy behind the nominee SubwayTakes, said it best in a recent interview: this feels like a watershed moment, the point where traditional Hollywood stops just lurking around digital and starts figuring out how to actually work with it.

I agree. And I think the continued democratization of content is a genuinely good thing.

But like any discipline where commerce and art collide, the most ambitious work is still going to need people with real resources willing to collaborate and push it further.

What I love most about this era, and what I see reflected in today’s nominations, is a simple idea: anyone with a perspective, a story they want to tell, and an audience they want to reach can be recognized at the highest level.

A gold statue is so much more than a physical object. It’s recognition. It’s people lifting other people up. It’s what it feels like when your work gets legitimized. It is art being validated at the highest level an industry has to offer.

But it’s also a signal. Usually from the people who hold the most tastemaking power in the room, telling everyone else to go further.

Today, the TV Academy sent that signal to everyone working in vertical and short-form. And I know exactly what we’re going to do with it: go further.

To be clear, when we’re telling a story, we’re not thinking about statues. We’re thinking about making the best story we possibly can.

But I’d be lying if I said today’s announcement didn’t give me a little more fuel to walk back into the unknown. The blank page. The next shoot day. The unfinished editing timeline that this work always seems to hand you.

So today, I want to recognize that the TV Academy is telling us something. Our peers are telling us something.

They’re telling us to keep going.

That’s exactly the message I needed to hear today.

Onward.

“Subway Takes” Along with other YouTube Shows Receive Emmy Nominations

The short-form series is the first creator-led show backed by YouTube to earn a nomination, alongside 3 other YouTube series, indicating a major push by the streaming app.

Traditional Hollywood Is Investing Big in Internet Stories. Here’s Why

The LA Times surveys why legacy players are treating vertical, internet-native storytelling as a real business line rather than an experiment.

Larry Namer at VidCon: The Future of Hollywood Is Vertical Video

E! founder Larry Namer told VidCon that Hollywood is still making content for the wrong screen, arguing the industry’s future belongs to whoever follows audience behavior over tradition. A notable endorsement of the vertical thesis.

Brands See Content Gold in Microdramas. Will They Muck Up the Moment?

Marketing Dive surveys the branded-microdrama land grab (Crocs, Dr Pepper, JCPenney, and Marc Jacobs among them) finding real engagement wins alongside warnings that treating the format like a rented 30-second ad could undercut the authenticity that makes it work.

Netflix Adds Variety’s “How Well Do They Know?” in New Publisher Video Deal

Netflix will stream short-form video from Variety, Vanity Fair, BuzzFeed, and dozens of other publishers starting in August. Another signal that streamers see snackable, vertical-friendly formats as essential to holding attention against TikTok and YouTube.

With Brand Microdramas, the Talent Layer Is the Real Opportunity

SonderCo’s Sean Akaks argues brands chasing microdrama virality are missing the bigger play: building real, ongoing talent relationships and franchises instead of one-off endorsement deals. A read that pairs nicely with this week’s Marc Jacobs feature below.

The Scene

Platform: Marc Jacobs’ owned social channels (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Website)

Logline: A fashion-world satire following Sennott’s frantic sprint across Manhattan trying to catch Anna Wintour’s eye and land a last-minute Met Gala invite. Marc Jacobs’ new Scene Bag is along for the ride.

Genre: Comedy / Branded

Rachel Sennott’s fingerprint is all over “The Scene,” and that’s exactly why it works.

The Scene Bag is the whole point of the campaign, and yet it’s never the plot. Instead we get fun shots of it like the POV’s from inside the bag itself: a technique that folds seamlessly into Sennott’s dizzying, constant-motion, docu-style handheld aesthetic. Nothing about the integration feels like placement.

The restless, indie, slightly chaotic “it-girl” quality of the filmmaking is precisely the vibe Marc Jacobs is selling with this bag, which makes the creator/brand pairing feel so right.

“The Scene” is available in both horizontal and vertical, and the vertical cut is arguably the better version. Getting only fragments of facial expressions and insert shots forces an extra layer of gritty intimacy and immediacy onto the footage and for a plot that’s essentially one long gallivant across Manhattan, that fragmentary, on-the-move quality is the appeal.

The namedrops and cameos (Francesca Scorsese, the SubwayTakes guy, Anna Wintour as a running gag) these aren’t in your face gen-pub pandering, they’re winks. You either clock them or you don’t, and that’s the design. A pure IYKYK exercise that flatters the audience sharp enough to catch it, and in doing so, quietly sorts viewers into “the kind of person who’d carry this bag.”

And then there’s the writing, which is where Sennott is truly in her element. The entire episode runs on dramatic irony. That gap between what the audience knows and what the character believes is the engine of the comedy, and it’s mined for everything it’s worth, right down to the stuffed puppet rat.

Sennott also understands microdrama stakes in comedy specifically. Getting caught calling the paparazzi on herself could read as a minor beat but here, it’s treated as a genuine crisis — and that’s correct, because comedy thrives on turning molehills into mountains. And those mountains are what makes a microdrama run. The audience laughs because they recognize themselves in the overreaction.

The pacing is another real technical achievement. In a few minutes, we watch her bolt out of the apartment, try to hunt down SubwayTakes guy, getting busted calling Backgrid on herself, mistake a dinner reservation confirmation call for Anna Wintour, spill wine on a stranger thanks to the rat, and get home just in time to discover the invite she already had. That’s six or seven distinct beats back to back. She nails the microdrama pacing. Setting it in New York wasn’t incidental either: that city’s built-in velocity is what makes cramming that much plot into three minutes believable and relatable.

My only real complaint is that there’s only one episode. Marc Jacobs found a way to showcase a $478 bag without a single cringe-inducing moment, inside a format built for a very specific audience, using a creator whose comedic instincts are purpose-built for exactly this pace. Given that Sennott made her name in digital before crossing over to legacy film and TV, none of this should be surprising, but as someone who falls squarely in this target demo, I (Fran) for one loved it.

ATTN VERTICAL FILMMAKERS: WHY SHOOTING OPEN GATE IS A GAME CHANGER FOR 9:16

If you’re about to direct a vertical microdrama, one of the first creative decisions you’ll make is deceptively technical.

What aspect ratio are you actually going to shoot?

On our first microdrama, The Diamond Rose, we shot native 9:16.

We mounted cameras to L-brackets. We committed completely to the final frame.

At the time, that felt right. Scott wanted to discipline himself as a Director, and challenge himself and the DP, to innovate inside the exact confines of the audience experience.

It’s called the Paradox of Constraints. It might be why Hemingway’s six-word story packs such an emotional punch: Boundaries unlock creativity.

On our next vertical, a musical series called PLAYBACK, we had the opportunity to shoot on Sony BURANOs with full-frame Cooke lenses.

This time, we mounted the cameras horizontally and we shot open gate.

Having the option to reformat the show horizontally down the line was a nice bonus. But that’s not why we did it. We did it because, already having had one microdrama under our belt, we knew the constraints and the challenges.

With these in mind, shooting horizontally made the vertical version better.

In post, it gave us the ability to reframe left and right. To fine-tune emotional close-ups. To push in and out and around with fewer boundaries, but with the intention that only comes from experience of restriction.

That kind of flexibility is key when you’re trying to make something that feels precise, cinematic, and emotionally alive inside a vertical frame.

Shooting in 6k, it also let us shoot wider and capture two actors at once, to split them into singles later. This saved us time and gave us room for more ambitious staging, which mattered a lot on a series with 17 musical numbers.

But one of the biggest unlocks was what it gave the actors.

By blocking scenes a certain way, and running a three-camera setup on the full-frame sensor, we were able to give performers more usable takes without slowing the machine down.

On many vertical sets, actors get one or two takes in coverage and then everyone moves on.

Not on this set. One actor told me afterward:

“I was always able to do my best work, even as we shot so many pages. I was never rushed.”

That stayed with me because when you’re shooting 15 pages a day, every edge matters. Every technical choice is also a creative choice. And every creative choice is a chance to protect the performances, elevate the story, and push the medium forward.

The point isn’t that every vertical should shoot open gate. In fact, if it’s your first one, I’d challenge you not to.

The point is that vertical storytelling deserves the same level of thought we bring to any other format. The frame may be smaller, but the choices within these limits can often have a more profound impact on the result, precisely because there is no “wiggle room”.

Every story in this space that succeeds in elevating the medium is a win for all of us.

Happy shooting.

That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microseries and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—scripted content in the mobile age.

This week, Vanity Fair examines the rise of vertical video, brands + creator partnerships redefined our editor Scott Brown shares his presentation from Creator Beach in Cannes.

But First-

We really are at a crossroads, aren’t we?

Cannes Lions was an incredible experience. If they continue doubling down on becoming a home for the creator economy, I’d recommend anyone interested in this space make the trip next year.

There’s something about gathering so many people from traditional media, digital platforms, brands, creators, and investors in one place that gives you a clearer view of where digitally native storytelling is headed. Verticals are an increasingly important part of that conversation, but they’re no longer the whole conversation.

Across dozens of meetings, I noticed a consistent feeling. There was optimism - real optimism - but also uncertainty. It wasn’t the uncertainty of people wondering whether verticals are a fad. Quite the opposite. Most people I spoke with seemed increasingly convinced they’re becoming a permanent part of the entertainment landscape.

The uncertainty is about how to fully address the sector from a business perspective.

We can all see that major vertical platforms are generating meaningful revenue. What we still don’t have are enough clear, repeatable examples of outside investors, producers, and studios putting money into a title or slate and generating exceptional returns. Every emerging medium eventually reaches the moment where the economics become undeniable. Verticals haven’t quite had that moment yet.

I don’t think we’re very far away.

One reason is distribution. TikTok’s deeper move into serialized storytelling may prove to be one of the most important developments the industry has seen. It shifts some power away from closed ecosystems deciding what audiences watch and toward an algorithm that rewards genuine audience engagement. The algorithm isn’t perfect, but it is far more meritocratic than traditional gatekeeping. As communities rally around great stories, quality has a better chance to win.

The other reason is something I discussed during my Cannes presentation, which you’ll find in full at the end of this week’s newsletter.

We’re beginning to see evidence that investing in better storytelling produces better business results.

As part of my talk at Cannes, I asked several companies that have deliberately bet on higher-quality programming whether they’d be willing to share any data supporting that belief. A few generously offered snapshots.

What excites me most is that these are still early signals.

More outside investors are entering the market. (Some unannounced ones that are even more interesting are coming too) More experienced producers are bringing ambitious projects into the space. New distribution opportunities are emerging beyond the dedicated vertical apps. Some of those bets are going to work.

And when that happens that uncertainty will give way to something new. It’s still early, barely three years in a lot of ways. Let’s keep it going, one story at a time.

Going Up? The (Continued) Rise of Vertical Video — Vanity Fair Vanity Fair examines vertical video’s leap from social-media novelty to a mainstream viewing habit — a useful mainstream temperature check for anyone still convincing skeptical executives or brand partners that microdramas aren’t a passing trend.

The 4 Types of Creator Partners — The Publish Press A post-Cannes breakdown of how brands now deploy creators as distribution, talent, directors, and consultants. Where brands are moving from sponsoring vertical series to becoming characters inside them.

More Romance Novels Than Ever Being Adapted For Streaming, Research Finds — Deadline New Ampere research finds 83% of first-run romance commissions are now scripted book adaptations, not reality dating shows — the same BookTok-fueled pipeline reshaping streaming that’s also driving demand for microdrama’s romance-heavy catalog.

The Great Studio Transformation: AI, Innovation and the New Business of Film — NAB Show NAB Show’s recap of Hollywood’s AI-and-IP pivot opens with microdramas, quoting former NBCUniversal chair Susan Rovner calling vertical series a rare growth pocket while the traditional studio business contracts around it.

Game of Choice

Platform: TallFlix

Logline: After a fierce argument separates single mother Eve from her rebellious daughter Vicky, Vicky disappears, forcing Eve into Eden Island, a deadly competition where contestants must fight to save the people they love.

Genre: Psychological Action Thriller / Survival / Family Drama

This 65-episode TallFlix series Game of Choice keeps the emotional language of microdrama, leaning into heightened performances, family conflict, and unabashed melodrama. Once the characters enter the killing game, that intensity feels entirely at home, proving that genres other than soapy-romance can feel “right” in this format as well. The circumstances really are that extreme, so the tears, rage, fear, and enormous emotional swings become believable within the world.

The series then brings in its legacy elements through craft. Qianyu David Zhang’s cinematography uses dollies, cranes, and tracking shots to create a rare sense of scale and movement for the format. The lighting and color grade embrace shadows and atmosphere without sacrificing saturation or clarity on a small screen. Highly ambitious and well-executed stunt work adds another layer of scope. The cast completes the combination: Jackson Tiller brings remarkable emotional truth to a brief role, while Felix Merback makes Lafayette’s theatricality feel unpredictable, entertaining, and genuinely frightening.

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

Editor’s Note: This is the presentation I gave last week in Cannes. The panel with Hannah Stocking and Sasha Tkcachenko of Holywater dove into the vertical world, but I realized as I built it, and as I spoke to so many people on the Croisette, that more than ever, the conversation must be about the larger explosion of digitally native scripted content.

Here we go!

Hi everyone, and thanks for being here. In a few minutes I’m going to bring out two close collaborators, Hannah Stocking and Sasha Tchachenko, and we’re going to talk about the Microdrama Boom, and what it signals about the future for creators, platforms, brands, and really anyone with a story they want to tell and an audience they want to reach.

But before we do that, I’d like to provide a little history of what got us here.

I’d like to tell you a story.

Because I’ve spent most of my professional life searching for something.

A little about me. Hi, I’m Scott Brown. I’m the Founder of Second Rodeo Productions, and for almost twenty years I’ve worked at the intersection of traditional media and what we now call the creator economy.

Starting in 2012 I directed more than 700 episodes of Larry King’s return to Hulu.

In 2016, I helped launch Dwayne Johnson’s YouTube channel and made a musical on YouTube with Lin-Manuel Miranda.

In 2023, I even crashed a train with MrBeast and helped create a video viewed more than 300 million times.

And through all of it, I was searching for something.

So what was I searching for?

You have to understand that I love scripted storytelling.

It’s why I got into media in the first place. I love films. I love television. The first things I ever made online were scripted web series. More than anything in my professional life, I wanted scripted entertainment to truly work on the internet. To become native to the home I had spent so much time in.

Not as a marketing campaign. Not because of a talented outlier. Not as a one-off success story.

I wanted a sustained audience desire to watch scripted content online. Stories made with actors and camera coverage and imagination. Stories supported by a sustainable business where creative people could thrive.

Every few years, a company would arrive and declare that digitally native scripted entertainment had finally arrived.

Sony Crackle.

YouTube Red.

Quibi.

And every time, I wanted it to be true.

But every time I looked at the audience behavior, every time I looked at the data, I came away with the same feeling.

My heart would sink and the data and the audience would tell me and the rest of the industry…

Not yet.

Then in February of 2024, a producer friend sent me an article about something called a short drama.

Today we call them microdramas.

And I followed the rabbit hole.

I read article after article, study after study.

But this time something was different.

My heart didn’t sink.

It flew.

Because this time, the audience was telling a different story.

And now, standing here at Cannes Lions, on the Croisette, I really believe I get to say something I’ve been waiting a very long time to say.

That thing I’ve been searching for?

I think I found it.

The article was about what we now call microdramas.

Now, what is a microdrama?

When people ask me that question, I usually ask another one.

What is a movie?

A movie is a collection of scenes that, when watched in their intended order, creates a sensation we call plot. People are willing to pay for plot.

Now imagine those scenes are about seventy-five seconds long. Imagine they are divided into chapters. Imagine they are designed for the phone and shot vertically.

That’s the beginning of a microdrama.

Microdramas are conflict-rich and plot-driven.

These are stories moving at the speed of Tik Tok

Audiences often discover them through social feeds and advertisements that lead to dedicated apps, though that is beginning to change.

And while the industry borrows some monetization strategies from mobile gaming, the thing really driving more than a billion dollars in annual revenue and hundreds of millions of views is something much simpler.

People simply want to know what happens next.

And they are willing to pay for it.

That is an opportunity.

So where are we now in this microdrama boom?

Many people describe today’s microdramas as soapy. Romance-driven. Full of cliffhangers.

Sometimes executed in ways that don’t resemble traditional television or film.

That observation is worth examining.

Because history loves to rhyme.

When television entered American homes, one of its first breakout formats was the soap opera.

Stories built to sell products.

They were enormously popular. Audiences were obsessed with them.

Cultural gatekeepers often dismissed them.

But that didn’t matter.

Because soap operas helped prove that television could become a legitimate storytelling medium.

And I think we are seeing something very similar today.

What’s fascinating is that in those early days, it would have been nearly impossible to predict that the same box bringing soap operas into people’s homes would one day bring The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and the World Cup.

Because the first successful format in a medium is rarely it’s strongest product

And I think that may be one of the mistakes some people make when evaluating microdramas today.

They look at the current version and assume it is the destination.

History suggests it may be the beginning.

When I think about the future, I don’t think we should only be talking about microdramas.

They are one exciting format inside something much larger.

An explosion of digitally native scripted formats.

Vertical and horizontal.

Short-form and long-form.

Formats and storytelling structures we haven’t even discovered yet.

Because a future filled with digitally native scripted entertainment will not belong exclusively to Hollywood.

And it won’t belong exclusively to creators either.

We are entering a period of rapid convergence.

Creators becoming studios.

Traditional storytellers getting closer to their audiences through digital platforms.

Platforms evolving.

Brands becoming participants in entertainment rather than merely sponsors of it.

New intellectual property.

New franchises.

New stars.

New business models.

The distance between the people making stories and the audiences consuming them gets smaller every year.

That is a good thing.

Personally, I think it’s a great thing.

I opened this talk by telling you that I have spent my professional life searching for something.

And that now, I believe I’ve found it.

Scripted storytelling is finally becoming native to the internet.

Microdramas are one of the clearest indicators that it’s true.

But after making microdramas of my own, after seeing audiences embrace them, and after having the privilege of working with people like Hannah Stocking, a Forbes Top 50 Creator and HOLYWATER, whom FOX recently invested in, I’m more convinced than ever that this isn’t really the story.

The story is what comes next.

Right now - A lot of people in film and television believe that what I’m describing is the beginning of the end.

But it isn’t.

It is the end of the beginning.

For art and commerce, and all the amazing things that emerge when they converge.

For anyone with a story they want to tell.

For anyone with an audience they want to reach.

The time is now.

I spent twenty years finding this moment.

And I hope I get to spend the next twenty finding out what it means.

Thank you.

That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

Subscribe now

Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microseries and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—scripted content in the mobile age.

This week, Uber Eats steps into branded microdrama, we look at what unscripted reality can teach the format, and we finally make good on last week’s promise: tracing the line from the birth of television to the rise of vertical storytelling.

But first–

I’m wrapping up Cannes Lions with a lot to think about.

Wednesday’s panel was a real highlight. Thank you to everyone who came out, listened, and joined the conversation.

I’m heading home with plenty of new ideas about where this space is going, and I’m looking forward to unpacking them all in next week’s Vertical Bloom.

But for now, let’s get into it.

Blink49 and Uber Eats Build a Branded Vertical Mystery

Murder at the Mansion shows how established studios and major brands can use vertical storytelling to develop original IP together, with the sponsor built into the entertainment rather than placed around it.

Blackmagic Design Spotlights the Workflow Behind PLAYBACK

Blackmagic Design’s behind-the-scenes look shows how increasingly ambitious vertical productions can use connected camera and post-production tools to deliver cinematic scale on compressed schedules.

Instagram Takes Episodic Storytelling to the TV Screen

Instagram’s test of longform creator content, episodic series, and live programming on televisions signals that social platforms are no longer staying inside the feed, but bringing digitally native talent and storytelling directly into the living room.

Campus Confidential: Miami

Platform: Peacock (mobile app) / Bravo

Logline: In sun-soaked Miami, an elite group of students navigate friendships, romance, Greek life, and social media scandals… proving that behind every yacht party and perfect post lies a much messier reality.

Genre: Unscripted / Reality microdrama

Anyone who’s been on TikTok in the last two years knows that sorority content has its own gravitational pull. Rush recaps, drop day reactions, pledge reveals: The internet is clearly clamoring for this world, and Campus Confidential: Miami arrives knowing exactly that.

What works here is the format matching the material almost perfectly. Talking heads, the bread and butter of reality TV, translate to 9:16 better than almost any other shot type. You’re close, you’re in someone’s face, and the frame doesn’t feel compromised. The on-screen texts and social media overlays that might feel grafted-on when watched on a television feel completely natural watching on a phone.

Unscripted digital has been working for a long time, and traditional reality TV has actually absorbed a lot of the grammar of online content far more fluidly than scripted digital has.

I Think I’ve Seen This Film Before

Editor’s Note: Last week, we promised to go back to the birth of television. We tend to remember TV after it won, forgetting how much resistance, dismissal, and uncertainty surrounded it as a new format. This week, we look at that struggle and the path television took toward legitimacy, drawing a line to the pushback verticals and scripted digital face today. This is more than a trip down memory lane, it’s a reminder that the journey we are watching now has a history that it rhymes with.

That first quote is what the industry said about soap operas in 1932.

The second is from 1961, about television.

The third from 2026, about microdramas.

Irna Phillips’ Painted Dreams, widely considered the first soap opera, debuted on Chicago’s WGN on October 20, 1930. It ran in 15-minute installments, five days a week, built for housewives. The age-old story is that they were named “soap operas” because Procter & Gamble was the primary advertiser.

Short, frequent, emotionally direct, and shaped around an audience’s routine. Sound familiar?

Radio let broadcasters and advertisers test serialized storytelling before carrying it into television. Scripted digital is doing something similar now, with pilot mandates, giving studios, brands, and creators room to test before making a larger bet.

By 1937, 90% of their entire advertising budget went to daytime radio, and by 1939 they were producing 21 soap operas. Daytime soaps went on to generate $1.25 billion in annual advertising revenue across U.S. networks by 1984. P&G is now the biggest advertiser in the world. The soap opera is where they built that foundation.

Their core audience then: housewives. Women at home. A demographic the rest of the industry didn’t take seriously.

The core audience now: across Omdia, Media Partners Asia, and Real Reel, every major industry study lands in the same place. The core microdrama audience is women aged 25–55, with the paying demographic skewing toward affluent, urban women 30–60. On YouTube specifically, women 35–54 represent over 36% of microdrama streams despite accounting for just 19% of general viewing in those age groups.

In December 2025, P&G announced The Golden Pear Affair, 55-episode microdrama produced by P&G Studios. The company that invented the soap opera to reach women at home is now producing microdramas to reach women on their phones.

By 1953, Hollywood was panicking. And by Hollywood, we mean the movie theaters and cinema studios. These were companies whose entire business model depended on people paying to sit in a dark room together. They were watching that model bleed out in real time, because a small black-and-white box had shown up in living rooms across America.

Their response was to make movies more cinematic than ever. CinemaScope stretched the frame to 2.35:1. VistaVision added vertical resolution. 3D put the picture in your face. Technicolor made everything vivid and lush. All of it designed to give audiences something the little box couldn’t replicate.

The condescension was overt. Television was low quality. Television was cheap. Television was for people who couldn’t be bothered to get off the couch. The studios were loud about this attitude. A few decades later, they had to swallow it whole.

Some studios are learning from that lesson. In October 2025, Fox Entertainment took an equity stake in Holywater and committed to 200+ vertical titles over two years, including recutting Season 3 of Farmer Wants a Wife into 101 episodes for a “mobile-first binge experiment.”

“Innovation in digital storytelling is shaping the future of entertainment.” Rob Wade, CEO of Fox Entertainment

This is the same move as studios selling their back catalogs to TV networks in the 1950s.

And here’s what the studios missed the first time: the technology always catches up. The black-and-white box got color. Then HD. Then 4K. You can fight the format. You cannot fight the inevitability of better technology.

By 1960, 87% of American homes had a television set. Families were watching six hours a day. The format the cinema industry had dismissed as a lesser medium had become the dominant one. Not because it won a war of words, but because the audience simply chose it.

The GI Bill (1944) gave millions of veterans low-interest home loans with no down payment required. By 1945 there was a shortage of five million homes nationwide. Between 1947 and 1953, 83% of all U.S. population growth occurred in suburban places, miles from the movie palaces families had once walked to. For many of those families, television wasn’t the convenient option: it was the solution. Once enough families had one, gravity did the rest.

That logic has a 2026 version. Post-pandemic inflation hit entertainment spending hard. A movie for two is $40 before concessions. Ninety-one percent of American adults own a smartphone. Deloitte found that 39% of consumers had canceled at least one paid streaming service within six months. The phone is already in everyone’s pocket and the first ten episodes of most microdramas are free before any paywall kicks in. Entirely free scripted digital (Brooklyn Coffee Shop, The Group Chat) already have real audiences. When entertainment is accessible, audiences come.

This is not ancient history. It is a pattern.

The Dismissal Is Always the Tell

In May 1961, by which point 55 million television sets were in American homes, FCC Chairman Newton Minow stood before the National Association of Broadcasters and called television a “vast wasteland.” There were 55 million television sets in American homes at that moment. The format was already winning, but the institution declared it culturally lesser anyway.

In January 2026, TechCrunch predicted that microdramas would generate billions while announcing that they “kind of suck.” Omdia estimates the global market reached $11 billion in 2025. The criticism may fairly describe some of a rapidly expanding market. The format is already winning. The institution is declaring it lesser anyway.

This is the tell. The dismissal doesn’t arrive when a format is struggling. It arrives at peak institutional discomfort.

The Format Always Raises Its Own Ceiling

Skeptics of television pointed to the quality of the content. Fair point, for a while. Then HBO launched in 1972: paid television, ostensibly better than free TV, but still TV. Nobody quite knew what it was yet or how to talk about it. Vertical is in a similar period of business model ambiguity, experimenting with coin unlocks, ad-supported, subscriptions, free-with-discovery.

Then, on January 10, 1999, The Sopranos premiered.

Fewer than four million viewers watched night one. Within three seasons, that number was 13.4 million for a season premiere. The 2005 syndication deal: nearly $200 million (the highest ever paid for a cable drama at the time). People still watch The Sopranos for the first time every week, twenty-five years later.

HBO’s tagline during this period was “It’s not TV, it’s HBO.” They were trying to escape the stigma of their own medium. And The Sopranos made that escape permanent. Television didn’t improve because critics changed their minds. It improved because a format accessible to enormous audiences eventually attracted the people who knew how to use it.

The Legitimacy Avalanche Has Already Started

February 1, 2013: Netflix drops all 13 episodes of House of Cards at once. David Fincher directing. A-list cast attached. CBS chief Les Moonves called Ted Sarandos personally: “Do you know how television works? You give them one at a time.”

Netflix’s stock went from under $60 to over $400 that year. House of Cards became the first streaming original to receive Emmy nominations. Legitimacy, overnight.

We are watching that happen again.

Issa Rae, creator of Insecure, one of the most commercially credible names in American television, partnered with TikTok to produce Screen Time as a vertical series. 75 million views in the first week. 150 million in the first month. Fox Entertainment has taken an equity stake in Holywater, committing to 200+ vertical video titles. Major talent is moving into this format. This is what it looks like right before the credibility avalanche.

This Time, the Window Is Shorter

Television’s legitimacy took thirty years to arrive. Cable took another twenty. Netflix’s moment took six years from launch to House of Cards.

In China alone, microdrama revenue grew from about $500 million in 2021 to $7 billion in 2024.

Three years.

This is not linear progression. Each cycle is compressing. Technology no longer moves at the pace of industries. The window between early and too late is narrowing faster than any previous chapter of this story.

The cinema studios that dismissed television in 1953 eventually adapted. But the ones who moved first rewrote the industry. The networks that dismissed cable eventually caught up, but HBO’s head start was undeniable.

The audience doesn’t wait for permission. It never has. The phone is already in every pocket. The content is already finding its viewers. The legitimate names are already arriving.

History doesn’t repeat. But it sure does love to rhyme.

That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

Give us a sub if you don’t want to miss anything! See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

Subscribe now

Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microseries and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—scripted content in the mobile age.

This week, major brands turn verticals into a shopping engine, creator-led scripted IP makes strides, and the man who saw podcasts early thinks about the future of verticals.

But first–

I’m writing this from a brasserie in Paris, searching for a few more words…

And tomorrow we’ll be making our way towards Cannes Lions. The Festival of Creativity. I get the feeling from those that went last year that it’s going to be quite the event. The creator economy continues to evolve.

On Wednesday I’ll be sharing the stage with some recent collaborators and reflecting on where this vertical space has been, and where it’s headed.

But as I myself head toward Cannes I can’t help but continue contextualizing all of this in the broader evolution of entertainment, of the creator economy, of digital media, but also that of technology and culture. It’s all careening together towards something we’ve never seen. The words to describe this undiscovered future are the words I’m seeking here next to the côte de bœuf and the tiled ceilings.

What I’ll share on stage is ostensibly about vertical storytelling. The ideas behind it are much bigger. The future it points to even larger than that.

Maybe I should find all of this uncertainty unsettling. Instead, I find it energizing. Because while I cannot describe the hard contours of the shape our collective future in entertainment is yet to take, I have more certainty than ever that within it will be the beating heart of story, and the ever-present texture of the human experience.

And some dank memes too.

Tonight though, I’m going to keep searching for the last words I need for this presentation at Cannes Lions. If all goes well, I’ll share the talk itself here next week.

If you’re in Cannes, join me Wednesday at 3:30 on the Creator Stage, and if you’re not there, I’ll share it here not too long after.

I hope some people think I’m right, I hope some people think I’m wrong, I hope we all end up talking about it fiercely on the Croisette.

But for now, let’s get into it.

Fox Plans to Keep Tubi and The Roku Channel Separate

Fox has bet big on verticals via some key investments, and this signals it’s move into streaming. As more verticals preserve the horizontal frame we’re interested to see how Tubi becomes a player, and where Roku fits in.

Target and Bravo Turn Fandom Into a Shoppable Digital Series

Shop What Happens points to a future where vertical and mobile-first entertainment are not just marketing extensions, but commerce engines built around fandom, talent, and real-time purchase behavior.

Silk White Builds a Hollywood-Free Hit Machine

Silk White’s success outside the traditional studio system is another reminder that underserved audiences, low-cost production, and FAST platforms can create real businesses without waiting for Hollywood permission.

Graviteur Studios Bets on Creator-Led Scripted IP

The team behind this venture represent some longstanding minds within the digital space, and this bet around scripted IP is another signal towards the market’s confidence in digitally-native scripted formats.

To Her Beat

Platform: Chera TV

Logline: Set against sweat-soaked studios, neon-lit warehouses, and early-2000s dance culture, To Her Beat is a coming-of-age love story about finding your voice, choosing your people, and dancing like your life depends on it.

Genre: Coming-of-age romance / dance drama

To Her Beat announces itself differently from the first frame. The color grade is particularly distinct compared to what you’re used to seeing in vertical: no overlit faces engineered to pop on an auto-playing feed. It’s moodier than that, more textured. Paired with a needledrop opening track, the show reads as something that has a strong point of view.

The writing leans naturalistic, and the cast handles it deftly. This medium is typically loud about the overtones but these deliveries were much richer in subtext.

There’s craft in the camera and post work too. A shot inside a fridge and jump cuts that lean into the digital grammar of the format paired with cinematic tracking shots that nod toward contemporary TV. The sound design feels equally deliberate. There are sequences carried entirely on SFX and dialogue.

In a format where music is often used as a constant emotional prop to hold retention, that’s a risk. But the most interesting gamble is the dance sequences. Conventional wisdom in vertical says stay tight, keep cutting, don’t linger: the format rewards speed and escalation. To Her Beat has moments of breath early to establish the motif of full dance sequences. I for one enjoyed them.

Chera TV built its identity around the idea that the vertical format deserves the same creative rigor as anything else. To Her Beat is a wonderful one-two step in that direction.

What the Vertical Media Summit Told Us

Editor’s note: Hernan Lopez recently published a piece in his Streaminomics newsletter summarizing insights from the Vertical Media Summit: a closed-door gathering of senior leaders across the industry. Scott was in attendance but we’re only sharing info that’s available in the free, public edition of this recap. Hernan notes that clients receive a version with deeper analysis and proprietary Owl & Co research one day in advance. If you work for an Owl & Co client, or would like to become one, reply to Hernan directly.

Vertical is real because people are arguing about it like it is real.

“Vertical storytelling is a phase”

“The quality isn’t there”

“Real audiences aren’t watching.”

There is a version of this conversation that keeps coming back. The tone is usually skeptical, sometimes dismissive and the arguments aren’t new. But the fact that it keeps needing to be made is, we’d argue, exactly the point.

Hernan Lopez has heard this before. He’s the founder of Wondery, which he built into the world’s largest independent podcast publisher before Amazon acquired it. He was one of the earliest voices making the case that podcasting was a serious storytelling medium, long before the industry agreed. He was right about that. He is now paying close attention to vertical.

His piece on the Vertical Media Summit frames the pushback not as a warning sign, but as a familiar one. A format that keeps threatening something keeps generating resistance. The persistence of that resistance is its own form of proof. Vertical has been generating that for a while now. Dismissal can sound an awful lot like disruption if you listen close enough.

It’s also worth noting who was in the room. Netflix. Amazon. HBO. Companies that rewrote the rules of their respective industries because they saw a shift coming and moved toward it early. They’ve done this before. That they are actively interrogating vertical now is not a coincidence. It is a pattern.

Their presence does not prove exactly where vertical is headed. But it does make one thing harder to dismiss: the format is no longer sitting outside the serious media conversation. So the more useful move is to stop arguing over whether vertical matters and start looking closely at where the category is actually taking shape.

We’ll connect more of those dots next week. A short history of television’s first years, how the industry positioned it against cinema, and why the arc from movie theater to living room to pocket feels less like coincidence and more like inevitability.

But here’s what to pay attention to in the meantime:

The first thing to watch is the nomenclature. The vocabulary of this medium is still being written. Microdramas get most of the attention because they’re the format most comparable to traditional TV. But they’re one rib of a much larger umbrella. Hernan points out what we’ve been feeling for a while: vertical is as broad a category as television itself and the grammar and definitions are still being found and defined.

Something we’ve been calling a format might turn out to be a genre. Something we called a genre might be a secret third thing. (We once referred to Playback internally as a vertical motion picture because that’s what it felt like to us.) There is already a push to retire “microdrama” in favor of “microseries,” or simply “vertical.” Not all of them are dramas.The language is still catching up to the work.

The second thing to watch is viewing context because it both literally and figuratively frames the content. He offers a useful system: four distinct contexts for where people are watching vertical.

• Vertical native apps: Dedicated platforms built specifically for this format. Think ReelShort, DramaBox, CandyJar.

• Media super apps: Large platforms where vertical lives alongside everything else. Think TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts.

• Streamers, free and premium: Traditional streaming platforms now licensing or producing vertical content. Think Peacock, Netflix.

• News: Vertical-formatted journalism and nonfiction content. The most underreported category in the conversation.

Where people watch tells you just as much about the vibe of the content (and the viewers themselves!) as genre does. Each vehicle is building it’s own subset of audience expectations.

Then there’s AI filmmaking. The third thing to watch is that vertical is the clearest test case for it right now. There are essentially no fully AI-generated feature films or traditional series in wide commercial release. In vertical, the picture is completely different. AI-generated microseries already exist and already have audiences. (Though maybe not the same as the audiences that watch man-made microseries. Check out this edition of the bloom for our thoughts on that).

The reason is structural: when your budget is tight and your turnaround is fast, AI isn’t a luxury, it’s a production reality. The gap between what you can make with and without it is enormous at smaller budgets. It can change what a show is capable of being, not just how efficiently you make it. On a currently typical vertical series (small-budget with tight timelines), it can change the scope, speed, visual ambition, and even the genres that become producible.

The final thing to watch is timing. The big question of course is if and when to enter this space. Hernan names some instructive fads (3D movies, the metaverse, virtual reality) to illustrate how difficult it is to distinguish a trend from a technology looking for a use case. It’s hard to tell what the tipping point is. But, like with any good disrupter, those who are waiting to see it before they believe it will likely be too late.

Scott has said something to our team more than once since attending the summit, which was echoed to me when I read Mary Ann Halford’s closing remarks: the energy in that room was specific. Something more visceral than cautious optimism. A room full of people who have watched cycles come and go, genuinely excited about where this format is headed.

The energy around vertical right now does not prove the future. But it does show that serious people are no longer laughing it off. They are paying attention, testing the edges, and trying to understand the rules as they’re writing them.

That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microseries and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—scripted content in the mobile age.

This week, Netflix makes vertical moves, Us vs Pizza Guys vs Vampires, and we go on a deep dive into why digitally native scripted formats are finally taking off.

But first–

I’ve been thinking a lot about Disneyland lately.

As our team continues to work across YouTube, vertical storytelling, and more traditional corners of entertainment, I’ve found myself paying closer attention to the way audiences move between platforms.

Whether we’re helping a vertical app expand its YouTube presence (more on this soon), creating original scripted content for the various platforms (Horizontal and Vertical), or sitting in meetings with both legacy media and digitally native creators, I keep hearing conversations framed around funnels.

How do we get people in? How do we move them through? How do we maximize value? Working at the intersection of art and commerce, I understand the impulse.

But I wonder if a better metaphor is a theme park.

When I think about the revolution happening around vertical content, I’ve never seen it as a revolution around a single format. I’ve always seen it as part of the much larger digital scripted boom that has been building for years.

Every format represents a different storytelling experience. What if microseries are one attraction in the park? What if YouTube longform is another? What if serialized formats like Brooklyn Coffee Shop and The Ick are another?

And what about the formats that haven’t been invented yet? The ones quietly finding audiences in corners of the internet right now. The storytellers getting excited because something no one has ever seen before just crossed 10,000 views for the first time.

The most exciting part of this moment isn’t any individual format. It’s the ecosystem. Because the best theme parks don’t just create attractions.

They create communities.

Communities that gather in Discord servers and Reddit threads. Communities that share stories with friends and eagerly await what’s coming next.

As storytellers operating at the intersection of art and commerce, I hope we spend a little less time thinking about funnels and a little more time thinking about theme parks.

Not just how we attract audiences.

But how we create places they love, and look forward to revisiting time and time again.

Alright, let’s get into it.

Netflix Orders Minimum Wage From American High Shorts Team

Netflix has ordered Minimum Wage, a 28-episode workplace comedy based on the viral American High Shorts universe. Netflix is pulling from an existing digital audience and folding that rhythm into its own ecosystem. This feels like a clear sign that major streamers are starting to absorb digital’s pacing, audience behavior, and talent pipelines.

Idilio Raises $5.5M Seed Round with Katzenberg’s help

Katzenberg has repeatedly put capital behind new storytelling formats, from Quibi’s $1B NewTV raise in 2018 to more recent WndrCo bets in AI video and entertainment technology. Idilio suggests he is still circling the same question: what does mobile-first entertainment become when the market is finally ready for it?

The Kansas City Chiefs Launch a Microdrama

The Kansas City Chiefs are launching El Offseason, a nine-episode Spanish-language scripted comedy that blends sketch comedy with telenovela storytelling. The series follows fictional team employees whose offseason spirals into romance, rivalry, and chaos once football stops. The Chiefs are targeting fans across Mexico, Spain, and the U.S., with Mexico and Spain sitting inside the team’s NFL Global Markets Program rights. By blending sketch comedy with telenovela storytelling, the team is giving Spanish-speaking audiences an easy entertainment-first entry point into Chiefs fandom.

VertiCast Launches For Vertical Casting

VertiCast, a casting app built specifically for vertical microseries, has launched on iPhone, with Android expected to follow. The app lets actors create profiles with vertical clips while producers and casting teams swipe, shortlist, and message talent directly. Casting is so important, curious how this effects the process…

Pizza Guys vs Vampires

Platform: inverted.film

Logline: On their first night delivering pizzas, two coworkers stumble into a vampire conspiracy and have to fight their way through one very strange shift.

Genre: Action-Comedy / Horror-Comedy / Buddy Comedy

Pizza Guys vs Vampires is a refreshing watch because it feels built for vertical without feeling trapped by vertical. The series gets into the action quickly, using punchy edits, quick pushes, and strong visual rhythm to keep the pace of a traditional microseries, while still bringing an indie genre sensibility that feels specific and intentional.

The writing is also a major strength. It feels human, current, and clearly written in the language it was filmed in, with a self-referential sense of humor that gives the show a little Scott Pilgrim-style camp without breaking the story. What stands out most is how much thought went into the form itself: split screens are used to fill the 9:16 frame, the comedy keeps moving, and the costumes, makeup, and SFX all support the action-horror tone instead of feeling ornamental.

That balance may come from Dominic Russo’s role as director, producer, and story credit on the series. As a co-creator and executive producer of Workaholics, which grew out of online comedy before becoming a Comedy Central series, Russo clearly understands both traditional filmmaking and the keys of digital.

The takeaway is simple: vertical can handle real genre experimentation when the creative team knows how to honor the format without lowering the creative ceiling.

Why Is Scripted Digital Working Now?

Editor’s note: We’ve been cooking on this coverage for a while, and Franziska Harms went deep. Sometimes I think to trim things at this length, but honestly it’s so thorough I think it’s worth the read. Still, TLDR;

For years, scripted digital had a reputation problem.

It was either treated like a silly guilty pleasure hobby, a marketing add-on, or a place where traditional talent went when the “real” thing did not work out. Quibi is the obvious cautionary tale: big money, big names, mobile-first ambition, and a shutdown only months after launch. But Quibi’s failure did not prove audiences did not want short-form scripted. It proved that Hollywood could not simply shrink television, put it on a phone, and assume the audience would follow.

Part of what changed was the audience. Audiences are more fluent in digital storytelling than they used to be. The habits that once felt specific to very online viewers have spread across a much wider population, as phones, social platforms, and short-form video have become part of everyday media consumption. For younger audiences especially, that language is not an adjustment. It is often the storytelling environment they already know best.

The pace of digital storytelling no longer feels overwhelming to most viewers. It feels normal. The same retention language that once seemed native only to YouTube, TikTok, and creator content is now part of the broader viewing grammar. Quick pushes, rapid setup, compressed conflict, clear hooks, and emotional payoff are not tricks anymore. They are expectations. The appetite for content that moves at digital speed has caught up to the platforms it lives on.

Technology has also become more universal. More people have now grown up inside internet culture, then those simply adjacent to it. In the U.S., Pew found that 95% of teens have access to a smartphone and 96% use the internet daily, while nearly half say they are online almost constantly. TU estimated that 5.5 billion people were online in 2024, representing 68% of the world’s population, while its 2025 edition says almost three-quarters of the world is now online. Compare that to about 10 years ago: global internet use went from nearly 3B people in 2014, about 40% of the world, to 74% today.

The rhythms, references, editing patterns, and emotional shorthand of digital are no longer niche. They are mainstream. That changes what scripted work can feel like on a phone. A microseries does not have to apologize for being fast for example. It just has to be good at being fast.

The bigger shift is cultural. Digital is now mature enough to be taken seriously as both a business and a creative ecosystem. The numbers became impossible to ignore first. The creator economy is now projected to approach half a trillion dollars by 2027, and YouTube alone says its creative ecosystem contributed more than $55 billion to U.S. GDP in 2024 while supporting the equivalent of 490,000 full-time jobs. At a certain point, what looked like a side door became a real industry.

But money is only part of the story.

Digital has also earned status with the next generation. In 2019, a LEGO/Harris Poll survey found that children in the U.S. and U.K. were three times more likely to say they wanted to be YouTubers than astronauts. More recent Gen Alpha reporting points in the same direction, with YouTuber and TikTok creator sitting near the top of dream-job lists. That matters. For a long time, digital was framed as the place you went if you could not break into film or television. For younger audiences and younger creators,and therefore modern culture, it is increasingly the cooler place to start.

That does not mean the path is easy. Most creators still do not make a full-time living online, and acting remains a brutally unstable profession. But the internet has changed the odds of being seen. The barrier to entry is low, which means the range of quality is enormous. Anyone can upload. Anyone can try. That can make the space noisy, but it also makes it democratic. In the largest sea of fish, standing out becomes the skill. For filmmakers, performers, writers, editors, and producers, that has opened a more realistic early-career path than waiting for permission from the traditional gatekeepers.

It has also changed what a “break” can look like. Issa Rae built from Awkward Black Girl into Insecure. Quinta Brunson went from self-produced internet comedy and BuzzFeed videos to Abbott Elementary. Rachel Sennott used online comedy as part of her path into Shiva Baby and Bottoms. Workaholics grew out of a web-comedy ecosystem before becoming a Comedy Central series. These are not exceptions that disprove the system. They are signals that the system itself has changed.

This may be why scripted digital is starting to work in a way it did not before. Audiences seem more fluent in the pace and structure of digital storytelling. The tools to enter the space are more accessible than they have ever been. The business has become large enough to take seriously. And culturally, digital may be reaching a point where it no longer has to borrow all of its legitimacy from film and television.

Television went through a version of this. For years, film was treated as the serious medium, while television was seen as smaller, faster, and less artistic. That hierarchy did not collapse overnight. It changed because the work got better, the audience grew, and the industry slowly learned how to judge television on its own terms.

Digital may now be moving through a similar transition. Microseries seem to be working when audiences experience digital pace not as a downgrade, but as its own storytelling language. And the creators who understand that language are not simply getting lucky. At their best, they are using craft, instinct, performance, editing, and audience understanding in ways the traditional industry is beginning to recognize more seriously.

That should be exciting, not threatening. Legacy film and television still bring extraordinary discipline, taste, talent, and infrastructure to the table. Digital brings speed, feedback, access, and a deep understanding of how audiences behave now. The opportunity may not be choosing one over the other. It may be finding out what happens when both sides take each other seriously.

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That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microdramas and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—scripted content in the mobile age.

This week: America gets its first major microdrama festival, we consider Issa Rae’s Screen Time, and we ask the community how AI is actually affecting them.

But first–

I just got back from Hernan Lopez’ really well done Vertical Media Summit and was pleasantly surprised by both the energy and the faces I saw there, familiar and new. There was something in the conversations, on stage and off, that felt different. A new shade of sophistication around this moment.

I want to spend a little more time reflecting on the experience, and we may talk about it more next week, but as I spoke to people throughout the day I came to a realization:

The tense of it all wasn’t “if.”

It was “how.”

How big does this become? How does the quality improve? How do we build sustainable businesses around it?

We are undoubtedly in the midst of something significant. Audiences want movies at the speed of TikTok, delivered on the device they carry everywhere, in a form factor that fits the moments between the moments of our lives. When I look at the success of Backrooms and Obsession, I see filmmakers breaking through who sharpened their tools on the whetstone of digital.

I see the same voices emerging in vertical.

This is all part of the continued convergence of digital into our lives. An early format emerging from a fundamental shift in infrastructure that shortens the distance between audience and creator.

In his keynote, Hernan made a point worth amplifying. When television entered American homes, soap operas emerged as one of the medium’s defining early formats. It would have been nearly impossible at that moment to predict that the same box would eventually deliver The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, live sports, presidential debates, and some of the most influential storytelling ever created.

Every generation gets a medium that feels unserious before it becomes unavoidable.

These are still early days. But as I’ve journeyed through this industry, I’ve always tried my best to read the energy of the rooms I’ve been in, and yesterday the energy was saying something powerful and something certain.

Not “if.”

“How.”

I’m excited to see where it takes us next.

Alright, let’s get into it.

America’s First Microdrama Festival Is Coming to New York

Former Tribeca COO Pete Torres and former TikTok Head of Creator Initiatives Rita Vinnik are launching Alza Festival in New York this fall, billed as America’s first festival dedicated to premium microdrama and mobile-first storytelling. We love to see evolving critical legitimacy in the space. (Deadline)

Sunset Studios and Knockout Shorts Build Microdrama Standing Sets

Sunset Las Palmas is making the production pipeline more vertical-friendly, launching an 8,000-square-foot soundstage with standing sets including a courtroom, apartment, bar, restaurant, hospital, and office. More LA infrastructure, please. (Variety)

CandyJar Parent Launches AI-Generated Action Microdrama App Ironblood

Inkitt, the company behind CandyJar, is launching Ironblood, a new microdrama app focused on AI-generated action, sci-fi, and superhero series, with plans to release 30 new titles per month. We’re wondering how this plays into their larger approach on the celebrity side. (C21media)

Versant Media invests in GammaTime

The amount is undisclosed, but the company that owns Syfy and USA has made a move into the space and it will be interesting to see what they do here. We hear we’re going to see a lot more action on the investment side as the year progresses. (Hollywood Reporter)

Screen Time

Platform: TikTok / PineDrama

Genre: Thriller / Relationship Drama / Mystery

Screen Time works for two reasons.

First, it proves psychological thriller is a natural fit for vertical. The genre already runs on urgency, reveals, tension, reversals, and cliffhangers. Those are the same mechanics that make a viewer tap into the next episode. The hook is immediate: a double-date movie night is interrupted when a mysterious figure hijacks the TV and forces the couples to reveal their secrets or risk exposure. By the end of episode one, the stakes are already moving.

Second, it was made by someone with the right mix of traditional and digital fluency. Issa Rae came from the web series world with Awkward Black Girl, built a major Hollywood career, and now returns to short-form with both toolkits. She understands online pacing, audience behavior, and the “key of digital,” but also cinematic grammar, encouraging grounded performance, and story structure.

Screen Time works because the genre fit was strong, and the execution was informed by someone who understands both the internet and the industry. It also represents the full-throated entrance of Tik Tok into the Microdrama space, a major shift that we’ll continue to watch.

The numbers underline the significance here: nearly 75 million views in its first week and more than 150 million views since. If you’re not one of those, I recommend watching it on TikTok or PineDrama today. We like it. Some folks say it’s well done but repetitive. What did you think?

AI Is Splitting the Industry. Is It Splitting the Audience Too?

The conversation around AI in vertical can get very loud, very fast. But when you talk to people actually working in and around the space, the picture is less clear.

Some people are already feeling a major shift. Others are not seeing it yet. Some viewers are curious. Others are simply uninterested.

That may be the more useful story. This week, we’re not trying to decide if AI is good or bad, we’re wondering what effect it’s actually having on the here and now, and we’ve asked a few folks to weigh in. (By the way, if you have any opinions on the vertical world, please share them with us if you feel so inclined.)

AI is not landing in vertical as one single disruption. It is creating a set of parallel questions around talent, production, budget, and audience behavior.

Irv Gelb, a talent manager to some of the biggest actors in the space, told us he has “not seen a meaningful difference” in auditions for talent. From his vantage point, the shift has not yet reached the working actor pipeline in a measurable way.

But we hear different reports from different people. One talent rep told us they’ve seen a big drop in auditions for their actors. One seasoned producer who asked to not be identified told us it’s not about volume, but about material they actually want to make. “It feels like slop is creeping in, but not everywhere.”

And is the anxiety we’re hearing about coming solely from AI, or is it part of a larger perception issue as the sector realigns due to new players, including Tik Tok, entering the space? Matt Shepley, Talent Manager at Select notes “This is a relativistic problem. The micro drama space trained everyone to move fast - and they did. The vertical industry just jumped to warp speed while that was happening. When you’re already in motion, acceleration is nearly invisible.”

That split is worth paying attention to. Depending on where you sit in the industry, AI may either feel like something that is already taking over, or something that is still mostly happening at the edges.

The audience may be just as divided.

Meagan Johnson of Real Reel Drama, a prominent voice in the vertical fan community who watches roughly 30 verticals a month, told us she suspects that “the audience for AI-generated content may be totally different from the traditional microdrama audience.” She has been in the fandom for years, long before AI microdramas entered the conversation, and her read is pretty simple: the people she talks to are not necessarily organizing a boycott. They are mostly just not interested. It is not the kind of content they come to these apps for.

The conversation around AI often assumes everything is competing for the same viewer. But maybe that is not true.

This TNW piece says the market appears to be bifurcating: “AI-generated content serves a different market segment from live-action micro-dramas, and that the highest-revenue titles still tend to be those with human actors, original scripts, and production values that distinguish them…”

Every new technology experiences a massive boom when being adopted, but things level out. Feels like we are in that, and the future is writing itself every day.

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That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microdramas and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—television in the mobile age.

This week: Peacock jumps in, The All American Rejects make a Microdrama, and we consider the (vertical) impact of the upcoming US election.

But first, welcome to a new chapter of The Vertical Bloom.

I’m Scott Brown, founder and CEO of Second Rodeo Productions. My team and I are excited to be bringing you news, insights, and observations about this vertical moment we find ourselves in, with an eye always on its context within the larger boom of digitally native scripted content.

I’ve spent the better part of my career working at the intersection of creators, brands, studios, and emerging formats. I’ve done everything from launching Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s YouTube channel, to crashing a train with MrBeast, to helping bring legacy talent like Larry King into the digital era. But the space I can’t stop talking about right now is vertical storytelling.

Throughout my career I’ve watched initiatives like Youtube Originals, Quibi, or even Sony Crackle come and go, each proclaiming that digitally-native scripted content was here as a robust and lasting sector. Each time the data and the audience proved those claims wrong.

But this moment is different. It’s real. And it comes in a new aspect ratio.

Through Second Rodeo, we’ve had the chance to test that thesis directly. (You can read more here if you’d like.) And through the more than two years we’ve been building we’ve discovered so much, and met an amazing group of people having an incredible conversation about the future of entertainment, of storytelling, of the exploding possibilities of commerce and art.

That’s what I’m excited to share and explore here every week.

Not just the headlines. Not just the platforms. But the bigger question underneath all of it:

What does it mean when a new MEDIUM enters our lives, carried with us everywhere?

I believe vertical is still early. I believe it is more than a trend. And I believe the people who understand its evolving language now will help shape where entertainment goes next.

So, welcome back to The Vertical Bloom.

Let’s get into it.

Peacock Licenses ReelShort Microdramas
NBCUniversal is bringing 10 ReelShort titles to Peacock’s mobile app ahead of its own planned Bravo original verticals.

YouTube Shorts Moves Into the Living Room
YouTube viewers are now watching more than 2 billion hours of Shorts on TVs each month, a reminder that mobile-first formats are no longer staying on mobile-only screens.

Dr Pepper Turns Product Marketing Into Microdrama
Dr Pepper’s four-part TikTok series It’s A Pepper Fling turns the return of Creamy Coconut into a cliffhanger-driven summer romance, showing how brands are utilizing vertical drama grammar for campaign storytelling.

SUPERFAN

Platform: CandyJar

Genre: Comedy / Slasher / Music-Driven Meta-Comedy

This CandyJarTV series is a smart, funny swing for the vertical space: part slasher setup, part band comedy, part fan-service play. Built around The All-American Rejects’ own history, it riffs on their music, legacy, and current image in a way that feels fun for longtime fans but still accessible to casual viewers.

The superfan-kidnapping premise also works as a clever marketing engine, teasing new music inside the story and giving people a reason to keep watching. What makes it especially strong is how naturally it connects to the band’s real world, from the house party concept to the self-aware jokes about who they are now versus who they were in the early album days.

The rollout is also smart. By putting the first episodes on the band’s TikTok, CandyJarTV reaches fans where they already are. Some episodes also start with a quick moment from a band member, giving fans a familiar face before the story begins. That makes the show feel more personal and easier to enter.

The US Election is about to make Vertical Marketing much more expensive.

Part of what we try to do here is bring up things that we’re hearing people talk about. This week we’re tracking the upcoming impact of the election on microdrama apps.

As microdrama platforms scale through paid acquisition, the 2026 election cycle may create a major marketing challenge: the same social, mobile, CTV, and video inventory used to acquire viewers could become dramatically more expensive.

Paid acquisition is currently the primary growth engine for microdrama apps. Sensor Tower found that 68% of U.S. ad spend from major microdrama platforms went to social networks in the first nine months of 2025, while over 80% of DramaWave’s early downloads came from paid advertising.

At the same time, political ad spending is exploding. AdImpact projects $10.8B in political ad spend for the 2025–2026 cycle, Madison and Wall estimate roughly $6.9B in digital spend this cycle. These ads are sold at auction. That’s a lot of money driving up cost.

That matters because political campaigns are increasingly buying on Meta, YouTube, Instagram Reels, CTV, and programmatic video. the exact inventory microdrama apps depend on. Election cycles historically drive CPM inflation and inventory shortages, with some of the sharpest increases occurring in the final 30–45 days before Election Day.

What is this temporary surge in pricing going to do to the space? Will it create an opening for ad-supported platforms like Tik Tok/Pinedrama? Will it shine a brighter light on shows with built in followings via IP or notable names? Will it lead to more apps shutting down? We’ll be watching Q4 closely.

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That’s it for this week’s Vertical Bloom.

We’re excited to keep building this into a weekly home for the ideas, experiments, and creative voices shaping vertical storytelling in real time.

Expect more people from the creative and business trenches of this sector coming in for their own thoughts and opinions.

We’ll be back next Thursday with more headlines, more analysis, and another look at where this medium is headed.

See you then.

Editor: Scott Brown

Writer: Franziska Harms

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Welcome to The Vertical Bloom, a weekly dive into the fast-growing world of microdramas and vertical storytelling. Here, we unpack the platforms, creators, and deals shaping the format that’s quietly redefining what it means to make—and watch—television in the mobile age.

Fresh Takes

Before jumping into this week’s microdrama news, we’re excited to share that beginning next week, Open Gardens’ Vertical Bloom will be led by and the team at Second Rodeo—bringing readers even deeper behind the scenes of the rapidly evolving vertical industry.

A Quote from Substacker-in-Chief Ben Odell:

“Mitch, Fernando and I are so glad to have Scott on board. Open Gardens isn’t written by journalists or consultants observing the business from the outside. It’s written by producers and filmmakers actively trying to navigate these changes in real time by learning, building, and writing through them. Scott is out there making vertical content right now as a showrunner, director, writer, and producer, and his perspective on where this business is headed will be both unique and inspiring.”

BET Joins the Microdrama Industry with aTwist (a.k.a MicroCo)

BET, the Paramount-owned media group focused on Black audiences, has announced a partnership with microdrama company aTwist—formerly known as MicroCo—to develop and distribute vertical series across both linear and digital platforms. Through the collaboration, BET and aTwist will produce projects designed for both cable television and aTwist’s forthcoming mobile app, which is set to launch this summer. Each series will first premiere on the BET channel before moving to the aTwist platform. The partnership also reflects a larger bet from aTwist that the format can resonate with Black audiences, a demographic the companies claim remains underserved within the current microdrama landscape.

A Quote from BET Studios EVP and Head of Creative Aisha Summers-Burke:

“BET is planting our stake in the ground for the next era of storytelling. The microseries format represents one of the most significant shifts in how content is created, distributed, and consumed, and we’re positioning BET at the forefront of that evolution.”

COL Group Recruits Ex-Paramount and Disney Execs

COL Group, one of the largest players in the microdrama space, has added former Paramount and Disney executives as it continues expanding globally. Jason Ander joins as Head of U.S. Partnerships, bringing experience from TikTok, Paramount, and Hulu, where he held senior roles in digital strategy and integrated marketing. Eileen Low joins as Head of Partnerships and Sales for Asia after previous roles at Canal+ and Disney. The hires reflect a broader shift in the space as microdrama companies increasingly recruit established media executives to build scale beyond the early experimentation phase.

Canela Media Launches ‘Zully’—Bilingual Microdrama Platform

Hispanic media company Canela Media has launched Zully, a new microdrama app offering content in both Spanish and English. Unlike legacy players such as TelevisaUnivision and Telemundo, Canela operates with a digitally focused model, claiming a monthly audience of 60 million users across all platforms. Its strategy is to outpace their competitors, leaning heavily on gen-AI to produce up to 30 series per month. With production centered in Mexico, they’re launching as a fully scripted platform. Zully stands out because it reflects a growing push toward vertically integrated ecosystems where speed, ownership, and scalable production become the primary competitive advantages. If it works, however, can only be revealed with time…

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