Vertical Dramas Are the New Soap Operas—And They’re Reshaping How the World Watches Stories

Not so long ago, Netflix and the streaming boom were the scrappy disruptors rattling Hollywood. Today, the next wave of disruption fits neatly in the palm of your hand. Vertical dramas—think 90-minute soap operas sliced into one-minute, smartphone-friendly episodes—are exploding worldwide, and if you’ve seen even one ad on TikTok or Facebook, you already know they’re here to stay.

I dove into this universe recently, fully expecting to roll my eyes at billionaire werewolves and “I married my CEO” plot twists. Instead, I got sucked in. Quickly. These bite-sized stories are engineered for speed, spectacle, and that irresistible one-more-episode urge—an old soap trick dressed up in modern clothes.

Why the Phone Is the New TV

Let’s be honest: the movie theater, the television set, even the laptop—none of them stand a chance against the device we carry everywhere. More and more, the phone is the screen. Companies—many of them Chinese—recognized this shift early and leaned into vertical storytelling long before Hollywood could finish another reboot.

Micro-dramas, as they’re often called, deliver the core pleasures soap fans know well: heightened emotion, larger-than-life characters, romance, betrayal, comas, surprise marriages, and the occasional supernatural twist. But the delivery system is pure 2020s: one-minute bursts, designed for swiping.

The numbers behind this trend aren’t just big—they’re staggering.

• Apps like ReelShort and DramaBox pulled in $146 million in Q1 of 2024 outside of China—an 8,000% jump over the year before.
  
• China’s micro-drama industry hit $5.3 billion in 2023, and has since out-earned the nation’s domestic box office.
  
• In just one recent month, ReelShort, DramaBox, and DramaWave reached 34 million downloads and generated $78 million across Apple and Google stores.

In short: this is no fad. This is an industry.

The Studios Driving the Vertical Revolution

One of the most influential players is Crazy Maple Studios, led by CEO Joey Jia—whose company landed on the TIME100 Most Influential Companies list for 2024. With offices across China, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Canada, Mexico, and the Philippines, Crazy Maple is betting big on the future of vertical storytelling.

Jia launched ReelShort in 2022 after spotting two fast-rising trends:

1. the global appetite for romance fiction, and
2. the surge of short-form video culture thanks to TikTok, Reels, and vertical-first creators.

“What if we revamp the video industry?” he told Fast Company. And he’s doing exactly that. ReelShort’s production volume is set to triple in 2025 compared to 2024. Meanwhile, monthly active users grew from about 45 million to nearly 60 million in a matter of months.

What Micro Dramas Actually Look Like

If you’re picturing cheap, shaky phone footage, think again. These productions may be quick, but many are surprisingly polished.

Titles like Fake Married to My Billionaire CEO, Return of the Abandoned Heiress, and The Quarterback Next Door don’t pretend to be prestige TV. They’re meant to be fun. Fast. Addictive. And they know exactly what their audience wants.

That audience? Predominantly women—70% of ReelShort users, according to the company—with half the total user base located in the U.S. The biggest global markets, though, are India and the Philippines, where mobile-first viewing dominates everyday life.

The Business Model: Free… Until It’s Not

Here’s how it works:

1. You download the app.
2. You watch the first dozen or so episodes for free.
3. Right when things get really juicy, the app hits you with: “Want five more minutes? That’ll be $5.”

Finishing a full series often costs $25–$40—not wildly different from buying a season of a traditional show, but delivered in micro-transactions that feel painless in the moment. And with 60-second episodes rolling one after another, it’s far too easy to keep tapping.

How We Got Here: A Brief Technological History

This new storytelling format didn’t materialize out of thin air. A few milestones paved the way:

• 1992: IBM’s Simon Personal Communicator becomes the first smartphone.
• 2010s: Smartphones become universal.
• 2016: TikTok launches, training the world to film and watch vertically.
• 2020: Instagram doubles down with Reels.
• 2019–2023: Chinese platforms like iQIYI build entire vertical-video ecosystems, amassing over 94 million paid users.

By the time Western companies woke up, the playbook was already written.

Even Procter & Gamble Wants In

And here’s when you know the tide has truly turned: Procter & Gamble—yes, the same P&G that helped define the original soap opera era—is returning to its roots with a vertical twist.

Launching January 2025, The Golden Pear Affair is a 50-episode “microsoap” built specifically for phones and social feeds. Produced by micro-drama studio Pixie USA and starring actors already known in the vertical-drama space, it blends romance, crime, adventure, and—naturally—product placement for P&G’s Native line.

The key, producers say, is making the products instrumental to the story, not ham-fisted props. The episodes are fast, flashy, and built for swiping—P&G’s attempt to woo a new generation of soap lovers who may never have sat through a traditional hour-long daytime drama.

A New Era of Serialized Storytelling

Vertical dramas aren’t replacing traditional soaps. They’re evolving the format for a world that lives on mobile screens, decides quickly, and binges even faster. In many ways, they carry the DNA of classic serial storytelling: cliffhangers, heartache, outrageous twists, and characters you can’t help rooting for—or against.

The difference is the delivery. Stories have shrunk, but the appetite hasn’t.

If anything, the success of micro-dramas proves something soap fans have known for nearly a century: serialized storytelling never dies. It just finds new ways to hook us.

And right now, all it takes is a swipe.