The rise of vertical dramas
Posted on May 1, 2026 by bright_oliver
Over the last five years, these short-form, mobile-first films have become a multi-billion-dollar industry. Nicola Foley takes a look at the production process and considers whether these addictive mini soap operas are a passing fad or the next big thing
Words Nicola Foley
A billionaire poses as a homeless man to test the love of his friends and family. A bullied girl discovers she’s the heir to a mega-rich royal dynasty. A scorned spouse transforms themselves with plastic surgery and returns to wreak havoc on those who wronged them. A girl discovers her boss is actually (stay with me) the alpha of a secret werewolf pack.
Welcome to the wacky world of vertical dramas: high-octane, fast-paced, packed with outrageous plot twists – and extremely profitable. According to Omdia, global vertical drama revenues reached $11bn in 2025 and are expected to climb to $14bn by the end of 2026. And the growth shows no sign of slowing down, with Variety suggesting the global market is on track to be worth $26bn in annual revenues by 2030. Naturally, Hollywood is standing to attention, as are major UK broadcasters, which are now investing in the space in the hope of riding the vertical wave.
What exactly are they?
In a nutshell, vertical dramas are feature-length stories serialised into short episodes, filmed in a 9:16 aspect ratio designed for smartphone viewing. Accessed via dedicated apps, often with a subscription model, they lean heavily into melodramatic, soapy tropes such as revenge, jilted lovers and secret love children, as well as fantasy elements.
One vital ingredient is the cliffhanger – a hook to make you hungry for the next instalment. “The format is designed to keep you watching for as long as possible, and this ties into how brands monetise on social media by trying to get as much screen time out of you as possible,” muses Nathan Caselton, founder of Crew Studio, which supports vertical drama production from development to final delivery.
Another powerful component is audience analytics. The medium is data-driven to the nth degree, with producers keeping a laser focus on what audiences respond to and which plotlines are most addictive. In the case of ReelShort, that extends to careful cultural localisation of its narratives. A sports-themed romance, for example, features a hockey player in the American version, while the protagonist is a soccer player for Latin American audiences and a baseball player in the Japanese iteration – driven by the fact that they know exactly what audiences in different locations will prefer and watch more of.
An antidote to doomscrolling?
So what’s the appeal of these soap-operatic snippets, and why are people lapping them up so much? Bethany Thomson, creative lead at Sea Star Productions, another UK-based vertical drama studio, thinks it’s a way to meet audiences where they are and give them something more satisfying than endless disconnected TikToks and Reels. “In my mind, verticals are a way for people to gain value through 9:16 content that isn’t social media led,” she begins. “So instead of doomscrolling, they feel like they are doing something more productive and rewarding. They’re watching a real story unfold, and they’re getting more from their entertainment.
“We shoot around once or twice a month, and we did 18 verticals last year,” she continues. “There’s constant work around for us and the other production companies in the UK who make them. There are over 250 platforms and they all need original content throughout the year. There’s so much opportunity.”
Big in China
This is not the first attempt to make smartphone-friendly micro-dramas happen. Back in 2020 (with a rumoured $1.75bn in funding and a talent roster of big names that included Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro), short-form streaming-video service Quibi launched with a promise to revolutionise Hollywood. Its content – serialised, cinematic ‘quick bites’ of movies, reality shows and docs – were available for a fee on the company’s app, about ten minutes in length and viewable in landscape and portrait. Despite early buzz, Quibi shuttered just six months after its official launch.
At around the same time in China, however, a similar concept was gaining traction. Duanju, with roots in the country’s highly active fan-fiction scene, began to take off with a distinctive brand of ultra short-form (typically one- to two-minute), campy mini dramas. The format as we know it today was born and people loved it. In 2026, the Duanju market is estimated to be worth $9bn, outpacing the national Box Office revenue for the first time in 2024.
One of the major players in the market is the aforementioned ReelShort – owned by Crazy Maple Studio – which describes itself as a ‘tech entertainment company’ and has a similar model to Netflix, in that it both produces its own content and licenses content from other creators for its platform. The ReelShort app utilises a virtual currency system in which users purchase ‘coins’ to unlock episodes of their shows.
The output of ReelShort/Crazy Maple Studio would blow the mind of anyone used to working on traditional film and TV production: in 2025, the company churned out 400 series, and the target for 2026 is 600. This rapid turnover means the company is extremely agile, mimicking the micro-trends and ever-changing mores of its social media-obsessed audience. Another benefit of this speed is that it has been able to create an efficient feedback loop, testing content on the market and responding to what does and doesn’t resonate, ultimately giving people more of what they are engaging with. Its 65 million active monthly users suggest that the approach is working.
In China, the format is booming, but it’s taking off around the rest of the world too. ReelShort reports that around 50% of its users are based in the US, with 10% – and growing – in Europe. There’s a preconception that this is very much a Gen Z phenomenon, but a ReelShort team member tells me it actually skews slightly older than you might think, with the core demographic sitting between 25 and 35.
A key player in the UK scene is Crew Studio. Founder Nathan Caselton embraced the trend around six months ago when he saw the potential for it to go mainstream here. “You’ve got to look at Channel 4, ITV and BBC, who are all quite explicitly saying that they are commissioning social-first content,” he says. “They’ve not yet fully jumped in, but I reckon in about five years’ time – with Channel 4 probably being one of the first – they will be making their own vertical drama content.”
Caselton says that, right now, vertical dramas being produced in the UK can be somewhat ‘chaotic’, with platforms often hiring companies from a corporate video background to produce content, with varying levels of success.
“Film and television production and corporate production are two entirely different beasts – casting, location, narrative structure, getting the best performances out of actors – it’s an entirely different world,” he stresses.
Caselton thinks that teams who have come from a continuous drama background – the likes of Casualty, Holby City, etc – are particularly well placed to thrive in vertical drama, since they are used to getting through a high volume of pages each day, making content quickly and making sure it’s up to a broadcast standard. “We’ve tapped into those teams and sought to link them up to these projects because they have the experience to do it at pace,” he shares.
Inside a vertical drama production
That pace is the starkest difference between a vertical drama shoot and a traditional production. At Sea Star Productions, Thomson tells me they might typically get two to three weeks for pre-production and shoot for six days, covering about 15 pages of script a day. At Crew Studio, it’s more like 20 pages a day, working out at about two weeks of shooting for an hour-long film.
At that speed, efficiency is key – especially in how you shoot for the cut. “You have to sort of force the edit, and with that comes challenges because you need to think about how the scene is going to cut while shooting it,” explains Caselton. “So it requires a director with a slightly different skill set.”
Mostly it’ll be a multicam set-up, which enables speed but can compromise production values, given you’re lighting for more than one camera simultaneously. “What we’re trying to do is balance out the production value to make sure that, even if we are shooting with three cameras, it’s still got good cinematic qualities.
“It’s a balancing act, but if we want this to – and I think it will – become popular in the UK, as a business we need to make sure that our portfolio of vertical drama isn’t just ‘good enough’. It needs to be at the highest level it possibly can be for the time and budget.”
£100k to £250k seems to be the average budget, though they can be made a lot more cheaply, says Caselton. Something that might take getting used to for anyone coming from a traditional production background is the lack of prep time. “You have got to be able to enter the room and go: I know how we’re going to do this,” emphasises Caselton.
“It’s a case of: here’s the script, we can adjust things as we need. This is the rough blocking. Let’s make it work and get it in the can. So that ability to sort of just rock up and be creative and problem solve is a huge skill. You have also got to be open to changes. It’s challenging, but I think it’s quite fun because it’s incredibly rewarding.”
Caselton describes the process through what he calls the director’s triangle – camera, blocking and performance – all of which must work in sync. In vertical drama, he explains, that relationship becomes even more finely tuned because every shot has to work harder within the narrower frame and faster rhythm.
Rather than relying on traditional wides that capture a whole scene, directors have to think about how each camera can generate multiple usable beats. “You’re really trying to optimise your shots,” he says, with cameras ready to reframe quickly – picking up a reaction or key prop moment – so that editors have as many options to cut to as possible.”
That flexibility is particularly important given the editorial tempo of the format. “With the pace of these shows and the style they want, editors are cutting very regularly,” Caselton explains. “They want to be cutting every four or five seconds to keep the viewer engaged. If you have got five things out of one shot already, you’ve then got at least five cut points, plus the cuts in performance.”
The vertical frame also changes camera movement, and techniques that work in traditional aspect ratios do not always translate comfortably to the upright format. “Some of the early stuff I watched actually made me feel a bit sick,” he laughs. “When you’ve got a big pan in this aspect ratio to watch, it’s quite unsettling. Generally, you are framing a little bit looser than you might typically do, and rather than panning you want to be tracking.”
But Caselton’s absolute must-have skill to master for verticals is fast lighting: “You are having to compromise and say, ‘OK, we need to move on,’” he explains. “So if you can light effectively – not necessarily lighting for every single set-up, but thinking ahead – you can light the first slate and, when the cameras move, all you are then doing is flicking a switch and the lights for the next set-up are already in place.”
Blowing up or dumbing down?
There’s an argument that, with their lower-end production values and trashy conceits, vertical dramas are a dumbing down of the craft, pandering to a doomscrolling, attention-deficit generation and representing a step in the wrong direction for filmmaking. Thomson disagrees, viewing it instead as an entirely different kind of content consumption altogether.
“They cater to two very different audiences,” she states. “The audience watching verticals is not the typical audience that would sit through a Christopher Nolan film.
“Cinema has been around for years and it is not going anywhere. This is something different: viewers want to view it at home on their phone,” she stresses, while also seeing an opportunity for an eventual expansion of genres and a sophistication of the medium that might attract new audiences.
Caselton, meanwhile, is clear-eyed about the commercial side outweighing the artistic for his business. “This might sound blunt, but if you love your art so much and are also complaining that you’re not getting any work – perhaps you’ve got to consider getting on board with the vertical drama movement and making it your own.
“Ultimately, we’re lovers of film. We love producing film and things that are cinematic and there are certainly bars we are not willing to sort of lower our standards on. But ultimately, we know that if we’re going to make something commercially viable, we have to adjust and adapt.”
What next?
So how big is vertical drama going to get? It’s indisputably one of the fastest-scaling formats in online video, but where things get really interesting is engagement intensity. The Omdia report details that, in Q4 2025, micro-drama apps like ReelShort generated higher daily mobile viewing time than major streaming services, including Amazon, Netflix and Disney+, in the US.
“Micro-dramas are winning the battle for attention, rather than scale, at least for now,” the report concludes. “This is the metric streamers care about most as they look to grow mobile usage and compete with social video platforms where daily engagement is approaching 80 minutes.”
Whether we are at the peak of a hype cycle remains to be seen. Thomson believes verticals will support the current industry, rather than usurp it. “But the major networks, streamers and studios that bring it on board sooner and utilise it will be safer from being taken over by it,” she asserts.
Caselton agrees now is the time. “In five years, people that were dismissive will wish they jumped on it sooner. We have to move with what people want to watch. If this is the format they’re enjoying, how can we ignore that?”
Lighting a vertical drama
Maxwell Miranda from the team at amaran offers advice on effectively illuminating your 9:16 production
“Vertical drama productions demand lights that can keep up with aggressive schedules – sometimes 20+ pages a day,” says Maxwell Miranda, product marketing manager at amaran. “So, your top priorities in this fast lighting workflow need to be portability, simple control and output you can trust without extensive tweaking.”
Given that you’ll often be lighting multicam set-ups: “Consistency is key. Colour accuracy and flicker-free output at any frame rate are non-negotiable when running multiple cameras simultaneously, potentially at different shutter angles.” Of the amaran range, Miranda recommends checking out the Halo series, a new studio-focused family of bicolour COB lights, and Ray, a family of full-colour COB lights made for creators in search of power in a smaller package. “The Ray and Halo series offer fast, intuitive control, broad compatibility with standard grip equipment and enough output to handle a variety of interior environments without lengthy set-up,” he explains. “Because they’re lightweight and compact, they fit naturally into the tight spaces that the close, character-focused framing of vertical formats tends to require. Less time rigging means more time shooting – and with a true monolight design, set-ups take seconds.”
This true monolight design and the absence of separate ballast or AC power supply means you’re putting up one unit, not managing a chain of components, which makes repositioning between set-ups fast. The onboard and app-based controls let you make adjustments without touching the fixture too. Plus, “both the Ray and Halo offer high SSI ratings that keep rendering predictable across all camera positions,” making them ideal for multicam work.
amaran has a close eye on the vertical trend, which Miranda suggests has “moved well beyond social media – it’s now a legitimate production format with real budgets and creative ambition, and demand from that space is growing. Productions working in this format are looking for lights that are nimble enough for fast turnaround but still deliver the output quality expected on a professional drama set – and that balance directly informs how we develop the amaran line. Quick-set-up, lightweight, easy-to-control lights that get out of your way so you can focus on the rest of production.”
This article appears in the April/May 2026 issue of Definition
