Southeast Asia

Microdrama: Industry Saviour Or The End Of Content As We Know It?

Liz Shackleton

25 Jun 2026 — 11 min read

A selection of ReelShort microdramas

Last week, Streamlined attended the APOS conference in Bali, Indonesia, for the first time since 2023. Back then, the streaming wars were still in full swing; the global and regional streamers were announcing huge slates of local-language productions; competition seemed healthy, and subscription numbers and ad revenue were both growing.

What a difference a few years make. While the streamers were still very much present at APOS, most have retreated into producing local-language content in just a few Asian territories. Appearing on APOS panels, they talked as much about bundling, cost rationalisation and integrating ad tiers as they did about content. They’re also aware that long-form content is losing engagement to social media, messaging, microdramas and gaming, and wondering how to react.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be growth in Asia over the next five years. Vivek Couto, founder of APOS organiser Media Partners Asia, presented figures estimating that the Asian screen economy would grow from $179bn this year to $200bn in 2031. But what’s interesting is that he predicts the fastest growing revenue stream will be retail media and commerce. Subscriptions to SVOD platforms are still growing, but the initial boom is over, and the decline in traditional TV advertising is wiping out gains in digital advertising. Just three platforms – YouTube, Meta and Netflix – own more than half of online video revenue.

Couto also said that in future revenue will flow to those platforms that can “close the transaction loop”, i.e. persuade consumers to buy digital and physical products rather just passively consuming content, the playbook already followed by Amazon globally, Alibaba in China and JioStar in India. From the consumer perspective, that means we should prepare ourselves for a whole lot of intrusive advertising and “calls to action”. Take-up of Connected TVs (CTV) is growing fast across the region, emerging as another screen that may help boost subscriptions to long-form content, but is also regarded as a more effective device to sell us stuff.

Meanwhile, on smaller screens we continue to be valuable to platforms through our attention spans and not just our wallets. And that for me was the most depressing takeaway about where the market is heading. It’s no longer about educating or even entertaining the audience – it’s all about keeping us glued for hours to mobile screens, consuming reels on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram; following rage-bait on X and Threads; and now consuming microdramas on a rising tide of US, Chinese and Ukrainian platforms that are competing for our attention.

Already the golden age of premium TV is receding in the rear-view mirror like a quaint memory and yes, I sound like a Gen X fogey, but the issue here is the concentration of revenue and influence around a small group of platforms, mostly owned by US tech giants, and how the rest of the industry ends up becoming vendors and dependents. Despite the hype around the Backrooms and Obsession filmmakers emerging on YouTube, very few creators or producers make much money on these platforms. Now everyone seems to be focusing their attention on microdrama, but again, who will be the winners and losers with this medium?

**Global streamers Netflix, Prime Video, Disney & Warner Bros speak at APOS**

Microdrama Is Becoming A Global Phenomenon, But Is It Just A Fad?

Actually it wasn’t all doom and gloom at APOS – Couto kept framing these changes as a reset, not decline, although it entails a massive reallocation of revenue and it remains unclear who is going to survive or lose out. Speaking about the global impact of AI, TWG Global Co-chairman Thomas Tull said: “We're going to see traditional companies of scale pivot successfully, and we're going to see some that don't, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some companies that have traditionally been thought of as very large and successful become irrelevant in the next three to five years.”

There are many moving parts here – Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery; the impact of AI and microdrama on China’s entertainment industry, India’s ongoing digital evolution, Korea’s ongoing crisis with five subsidiaries of JoongAng Group, including cinema chain Megabox and Plus M Entertainment, filing for court-supervised restructuring last week. There’s no way to predict how all of this will shake out – which makes covering this industry so interesting. But one trend we can’t ignore is the rise of microdrama.

You have to hand it to the pioneers in the microdrama space – they saw an opportunity and monetised it in a way that keeps revenue flowing to their platforms and not the tech giants. Joey Jia, founder of Crazy Maple Studio and ReelShort, told me that nearly all their revenue comes from the ReelShort app, so they’re not relying on YouTube, TikTok et al to distribute their product. I’m guessing it’s a similar story with the other microdrama apps operating outside China, including DramaBox, Flareflow, Netshort, RJOY and MyDrama (yes, I’ve had the pleasure of downloading them all and sampling their wares. I’m focusing on the non-Chinese microdrama industry in this newsletter and will look at China another time because that’s a whole different beast).

And the numbers speak for themselves. MPA estimates that microdramas are a $3.2bn business outside of China and set to triple to $9.3m by 2031 with just two platforms – ReelShort and Dramabox – accounting for half of revenue. (Inside China, microdrama is worth $11.5bn in 2026 and set to grow to to $16.8bn by 2031). Revenue comes from consumers paying per episode, once they’ve been hooked by the first few free installments, weekly or monthly passes and advertising. Jia told me that ads account for just 10% of ReelShort’s revenue, with the rest coming from subscriptions and in-app purchases.

But the only way microdrama producers have been able to make their content this compelling is by making it addictive, dumb and borderline exploitative (my observation, not theirs). We can’t blame them for making such schlocky shows because there’s obviously an audience for secret billionaires, CEO romance, love affairs with werewolves, orcs and mafia dons, and my own personal favourite, grannies wreaking revenge on their uncaring offspring.

**ReelShort founder Joey Jia speaking at APOS**

And yet...after sounding like an old fogey, allow me to travel back in time to my feminist youth. What concerns me most about this content is that it’s mostly targeting young women but is full of pretty girls simping around in sexy lingerie and pining over men (and yes, werewolves). Life goals are achieved by seducing your boss, not showing initiative or launching a world-beating startup. It’s as regressive as it gets and while there’s a few mostly AI-generated Game Of Thrones-type pieces for the boys, the messaging is exactly what we don’t need in an era of rising toxic masculinity.

There’s been talk by some companies, especially in Europe and North America, of developing “quality” microdramas, which would hopefully entail some more enlightened role models. But then nobody like being preached to, least of all Gen Z, and if that kind of content was going to work on mobiles – for sure the enterprising Chinese tech guys who launched ReelShort and Dramabox would already have cornered that niche.

Microdrama was born in China during the pandemic, spread to the US, Latin America and Europe, became a big thing in India and South Korea, and is now being adopted by just about every country in the world. Several microdrama studios and platforms are headquartered in Singapore – including DramaBox, COL’s Flareflow, RisingJoy and V47 Entertainment. ReelShort, a mostly English-language platform, has teamed with Korea’s Showbox to make Korean-language verticals, the first step in producing content in multiple Asian languages after making Spanish and Portuguese-language shows for Latin America. Indonesia’s MD Entertainment is jumping on the bandwagon and even Japanese companies such as Nippon TV and Yoshimoto Kogyo are having a go.

It’s easier for some territories than others. India’s Saas Bahu soaps and Indonesia’s Sinetron lend themselves quite naturally to the format, while producers of Japan’s more character-driven TV drama may need a period of experimentation before they get the formula right. For all of them it seems like a no-brainer – content industries are struggling everywhere, monetisation gets harder, production costs and the fight for attention just keep raising the barriers to entry. But here’s a format that is cheap to produce ($250k for a 60-episode series in the US, $60,000 in China, $20,000 in Africa) and makes money fast. And with AI that cost base can be reduced even further. As one producer said to me: “The content is bad anyway so we might as well spend as little as possible on making it.”

Is this a race to the bottom? Or will these producers use microdrama to keep the lights on and deploy some of that fast money to make high-end drama for the old folk like me? And will the young folk necessarily be hooked for ever on shows like My Alpha Boss Gave Me Triplets and Submitting To My Bestie’s Dad? And when the medium becomes saturated (if it’s not already) who is going to make money anyway, apart from the platforms and producers with first mover advantage? Jia said that when he started, his competition was all “mature, high-end studios”, but with the emergence of AI, his competition is potentially everybody.

And will there be any government regulation slowing down the growth of this industry? The Chinese authorities have already decided they’re not happy, earlier this month launching a clampdown on eight types of content, including material harmful to children, sexually suggestive scenes, wealth-flaunting, “distorted” views on marriage and relationships, superstitions, violent revenge, sensationalist titles and copyright violations. That basically wipes out most of the existing microdrama tropes.

More on this later, when I’ve spent more time in China, but censorship could potentially be an issue in lots of Asian markets, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Philippines, all of which have political and/or religious sensitivities. In the meantime, Streamlined plans to hold its nose and continue to research the revenue models and content trends in this new category. Either that or just retire if it looks like microdrama is really the future of entertainment. I’m not sure yet...

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Microdrama: Industry Saviour Or The End Of Content As We Know It?

Liz Shackleton

Microdrama Is Becoming A Global Phenomenon, But Is It Just A Fad?

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