The Vertical Bloom: 02/12/26
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
COL Group Continues Global Expansion with Distribution Push into Europe/LATAM
Hong Kong–based Harbour Rights is moving to globalize the vertical boom, striking a distribution alliance with China’s COL Group International to roll out more than 1,000 micro-dramas across Europe and Latin America. As the exclusive distributor in both regions, Harbour will market titles from COL-owned platforms, specifically FlareFlow and 17K, targeting both vertical-native apps and legacy media companies now pivoting toward the format. The deal reflects a growing consensus: after scaling in China and the U.S., microdrama is no longer a regional experiment but a format poised for a coordinated global push.
A Quote from Teremoana Seguin, Managing Director at Harbour Rights:
“Navigating the international distribution landscape for this new format presents unique challenges, from technical specifications to platform strategy…Our role is to offer partners a comprehensive, end-to-end solution, from initial content assessment to structuring complete output agreements. We simplify the process and enable platforms to seamlessly integrate this essential content and capitalize on its immediate audience appeal.”
‘Watch Club’—Founded by Facebook Alum & Backed by Google Ventures, Set to Launch
Watch Club is betting on short-form drama as infrastructure, not just content. Led by ex-Facebook product exec Henry Soong and backed by Google Ventures, the startup is launching with 10 scripted series while working directly with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA. Aimed at young women, its coming-of-age dramas are designed in a way to fuel interaction, fandom, and reaction content—blurring the line between consumer and participant in a way that many microdrama platforms haven’t yet accomplished. With backers from HBO Max, Hulu, Meta, Patreon co-founder Jack Conte, and the Sidemen’s Upside Ventures pointing to a bigger goal: building a social network disguised as a drama platform.
A Quote from KJ Sidberry, partner at Google Ventures:
“We’re drawn to founders who are obsessed with the change they intend to bring into this world…Henry deeply understands the intersection of storytelling and social connection. He gets how young audiences discover, discuss, and fall in love with content. It’s a new model for entertainment that can move at the speed of culture.”
Knockout Shorts to Launch with SAG-AFTRA Approved Project
Knockout Shorts is making a pointed entrance into microdrama by playing both sides of the table: early to the format, but institutionally fluent. The L.A.–based studio—founded by former Ace Entertainment, A24, and Freddy Wexler Company exec Matthew Ko alongside seasoned vertical producer Chris Crema—is launching with a slate of originals that includes what’s being billed as one of the first SAG-AFTRA–covered vertical series, reportedly headlined by an Oscar-nominated actor. The union’s blessing isn’t subtle: Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland has positioned Knockout as proof that vertical can scale creatively without reverting to labor shortcuts—an early signal that microdrama’s next phase may look a lot more like Hollywood than its scrappier origins.
Platform Spotlight
CandyJar TV represents the earliest North American answer to vertical—romance-forward, fandom-driven, and unapologetically emotional at a time when the format was still finding its footing. Rather than chasing scale through sheer volume or imported IP, the platform leaned into original storytelling that prioritized intimacy, heightened stakes, and repeat-viewer attachment. CandyJar wasn’t built to industrialize microdrama; it was built to make audiences care. As the space professionalizes and capital floods in, the question isn’t whether CandyJar can compete on output—but whether the industry remembers that loyalty, not velocity, is what first made vertical stick in the U.S.
Show Spotlight
In Love with My Ex’s Uncle (AltaTV):
Logline: After a painful breakup, a young woman finds herself drawn into an illicit, emotionally charged relationship with her ex’s uncle—blurring family boundaries and reopening wounds she thought were closed.
Genre: Taboo Romance / Drama
This 60-part AltaTV series leans into vertical’s most reliable engine: taboo as acceleration. In Love with My Ex’s Uncle doesn’t justify its premise—it deploys it, using secrecy, proximity, and power imbalance to sustain pressure rather than expand plot. The result is a show that understands vertical fluency: when the emotional math is this clear, discomfort becomes momentum, and recognition does the work spectacle usually would.
To understand what this kind of success means for the industry, I turned to the people shaping it behind the scenes…
Industry Insider
Meagan Johnson, a microdrama screenwriter and advocate, poses an important question as the frameworks of the growing vertical industry continue on the rise in this new year: who exactly is protecting the integrity of the stories being consumed? Johnson says that there’s a growing tension inside the English-language microdrama ecosystem: as the format professionalizes, story has become the quiet casualty.
A clear arc has arisen—2024’s rough but narratively rich experiments gave way to 2025’s slick, scalable, and increasingly hollow output, arguing that the industry solved production and monetization faster than it protected emotional coherence.
The provocation isn’t nostalgic or anti-growth; it’s structural.
If vertical drama is built on speed and volume, someone still has to be accountable for narrative integrity, audience trust, and long-term satisfaction. The warning is simple but urgent: without advocates for story at the center, microdrama risks optimizing itself into forgettability just as it reaches mass scale.
Read the whole take here.