They are as short as a toothbrushing tutorial but pack the same spicy wallop as a BookTok romantasy. They’re as bingeable as a bajillion-dollar Netflix series, but with the stripped-down aesthetics of a Hallmark movie.

I’m talking, of course, about microdramas—the fast, fizzy serialized videos flooding phones worldwide. In just a few years, they’ve become a full-blown phenomenon, generating billions in revenue without Hollywood’s help. At least, not until now.

As studios grapple with a sluggish summer box office and another thin fall TV lineup, a growing legion of viewers is glued to stories made exclusively for their phones. Microdramas—or vertical shows, as they’re often called—blend the raw emotion of K-dramas with a TikTok sensibility. Think high-intensity, telenovela-like series, un

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