The Vertical Bloom: 01/22/26
Your guide on the happenings of the vertical drama landscape.
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
Holywater Raises $22 Million from U.S. Investors
Led by Horizon Capital with participation from U.S. heavyweights Endeavor Capital and Wheelhouse, this funding round marks the largest vertical-series investment to date outside of Asia. More than a capital infusion, this funding is a strategic declaration: Holywater is digging its heels in, not only doubling down on verticals as durable infrastructure, but emphasizing their importance within the international industry.
Quote from a statement by co-CEO’s Nesvit and Kasianov:
“Vertical series are no longer an experiment or an uncertain niche — they are proving to be a scalable, long-term format and AI-powered IP incubation engine for the next generation of global hits across multiple genres, far beyond microdramas.”
Chapman, UCLA, and others Begin Integrating Verticals to Film-School Curriculum
Amid the global vertical gold rush, American universities are already treating microdrama not as a fad, but as vocational reality: Chapman University Dodge College of Film and Media Arts has begun embedding microdramas into their core curriculum, with UCLA launching its Picture Start masterclass initiative, which details the vertical landscape and the production necessities behind it, and at the University of Cincinnati, they’ve started training actors to shoot and produce verticals. Academia is quietly recalibrating for a post-Hollywood bottleneck, and when institutions built to prepare the next generation start formalizing the format, the signal is hard to ignore: this isn’t a detour—it’s infrastructure, and it’s already being refined to last.
A quote from George Huang, professor at UCLA:
“A lot of our students have anxiety about how am I going to support myself when I leave here? And verticals seem to be the one industry right now that is booming, that’s growing…”
Verticals at Content Americas 2026
At Miami’s Content Americas 2026, LATAM power players stood shoulder-to-shoulder with microdrama leaders—no longer a novelty, but a parallel future. In an early panel, Omdia’s María Rua Aguete dropped the data bomb: daily mobile minutes for microdramas are already outperforming major global streamers across parts of Latin America, building on 2025 findings that showed the format overtaking traditional media in Colombia and was accelerating fast in Brazil. In a region built on novelas, this isn’t disruption—it’s evolution. Between Globo producing and Televisa Univision folding verticals into ViX, everything signals that 2026 will be a decisive year for Spanish-language verticals going fully mainstream.
‘Rags 2 Richmond’ — How a Successful Vertical Turned into a Feature Film
The musical dramedy follows Nathan as he enters Canada’s first Asian male beauty pageant in a bid to break into entertainment—an underdog story born not in a writers’ room, but online. After the shortform series racked up 9M+ views in its first month across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, the Rags 2 Richmond team partnered with Viral Nation, where Head of Programming Paul Telner framed the leap into a feature. By leveraging the built-in audience and proven cast, Telnet feels that he could pioneer a new form of IP creation: “incubate IP on social media through engaging formats, collect data, then tailor make a theatrical-ready film that reliably plays to an existing fanbase…”
Platform Spotlight
TikTok quietly rolled out PineDrama in the U.S. and Brazil just days ago—weeks after debuting its TikTok Mini section—signaling a deliberate, if understated, move into owned vertical IP. Built around core microdrama genres, soapy tonality, and 30–60 second episodes, PineDramas looks less like an experiment and more like reconnaissance. For an industry that has relied on TikTok as its primary growth engine, the platform’s direct involvement raises a sharper question for 2026: is this a test run, or TikTok staking its claim as a first-party player in the vertical arms race?
Show Spotlight
I Have Five Kick Ass Brothers (ReelShort):
Logline: When a shy teen comes home with a post-summer glow-up, she is suddenly on the radar of her brother’s best friend, a reformed playboy who knows she’s off-limits but can’t stay away.
Genre: Romance / Drama / Thriller
This 75-episode ReelShorts original, has already pulled in 43.5M views and roughly 179K favorites—highlighting the front page and ‘trending’ list on the platform. At the center of the story is Raina, a 20-year-old who’s lived her entire life under the privileged roof of the Smiths, until the family discovers their biological daughter, Coco, was switched at birth. Overnight, Raina is cut loose, physically assaulted, and shipped off to her “real” family: the supposedly broke Lincolns. It’s a smart watch because it understands the format: ruthless inciting incident, relentless pacing, and emotional cliffhangers engineered to convert shock into sustained engagement.
To understand what this kind of success means for the industry, I turned to the people shaping it behind the scenes…
Industry Insider
Atlantic reporter Derek Thompson breaks down why, and how, short form has become the new standard for audiences—and why it’s here to stay:
The newer generation’s shorter attention span isn’t about apathy toward storytelling—it’s the result of a media environment that compresses attention into brief, high-intensity windows. As platforms converge into endless video flow, audiences still engage deeply, but only with content that earns focus quickly through momentum, clarity, and payoff. In a world of constant distraction, the moments that break through must work harder. That’s why microdramas matter: they demand denser storytelling—more action, emotion, and narrative movement per second—because the content we do watch now has to justify every frame.
This breakdown is really sharp. The universities embedding microdramas into film curiculum is the signal most people are missing. When UCLA starts teaching verticals not as a side module but vocational necessity, that tells me the industry shift isnt coming, it already happend. I saw a frined transition from traditional shorts to verticals last year and their output tripled because the format forces tighter storytelling.