How Two-Minute Microdramas Became a Billion-Dollar Industry

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**K. Oanh Ha** (0:09)
Casey Esser was chasing an acting career in Los Angeles. He was balancing a full-time job as a personal trainer with occasional acting gigs.
Then one day, he got the kind of phone call that anyone trying to break into the industry dreads.

**Casey Esser** (0:25)
My agent and manager at the time in 2023 were like, hey, we think you're great, but this just isn't happening. We're going to let you go.

**K. Oanh Ha** (0:34)
Casey says he didn't let the bad news stop him. The next day, he started looking for auditions on his own and ended up being cast as the lead in a new series called Faded to My Forbidden Alpha. It was about an orphan maid who falls in love with a werewolf, who also happens to be super rich.
The series began shooting almost right away. It wasn't tied to a big name studio or streaming platform. It was for a mobile app he'd never heard of.

**Casey Esser** (1:02)
People would say, what did you just shoot? I'm like, it's like a short form episodic. They're like, what's that? I was like, I actually don't know.

**K. Oanh Ha** (1:13)
What Casey didn't realize was that he'd stumbled into one of the fastest growing forms of entertainment, microdramas.
Microdramas are essentially mini-soap operas meant to be watched on your phone. They're shot vertically, run roughly one to three minutes, and they are chock full of over-the-top drama and camp. Think secret airs, love triangles, and lots of dramatic face slapping.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:40)
He was in bed with me.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:45)
You're lying.

**K. Oanh Ha** (1:46)
Within weeks of its release, Casey's show racked up hundreds of millions of views.

**Casey Esser** (1:52)
I shared the poster on Instagram and in my mind, I was like, okay, we did that, moving on. Then two weeks later, started getting messages from all these different countries.
That was my first time going viral. I just couldn't believe how many people it reached. It changed my life completely.

**K. Oanh Ha** (2:13)
Since then, Casey has appeared in dozens of microdramas. The craze that began in China has spread to the rest of the world, and now the broader entertainment business.

**Yang Yang** (2:23)
By some estimates, one-tenth of the entire world's population watches microdrama. Omdia, which is a research company, estimates the industry generated about 11 billion US dollars globally in 2025, and it's expected to more than double by 2030 to 26 billion US dollars.

**K. Oanh Ha** (2:49)
Yang Yang is a producer on this show and is based in Hong Kong. Lately, she's been reporting on the microdrama boom, as has Bloomberg Businessweek's Christopher Beam.

**Christopher Beam** (2:59)
There's been a lot of adoption around the world. As you can imagine, there are companies trying to present microdramas as the next wave of telenovelas. So it is a global phenomenon with differences in various regions.

**K. Oanh Ha** (3:16)
Chris and Yang say recently, it seems like microdramas are everywhere, on hundreds of dedicated apps worldwide, in marketing and promotional content from brands like Crocs and Maybelline. Even on The Tonight Show, starring Jimmy Fallon and John Stamos.

**SPEAKER_7** (3:32)
Why?

**Christopher Beam** (3:33)
Why would you do this?

**SPEAKER_7** (3:35)
I've never even met you. No, no, no, no, no, no. We've met before, but I'm sure you don't remember a lowly caddy at your precious country club.

**K. Oanh Ha** (3:45)
But as microdramas surge into the mainstream, the industry is grappling with a disruptive force that could reshape its future.

**Yang Yang** (3:53)
You have AI cutting cost and making the business model more efficient and more scalable.
On the other hand, you have the human cost and displacement, also a lot of repetitive content made by AI. The real question is, is AI good or bad for the industry? But rather, who benefits from AI's impact and who's left out?

**K. Oanh Ha** (4:26)
This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Oanh Ha. Every week, we take you inside some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies, and the markets, tycoons, and businesses that drive this ever-shifting region. Today in the show, microdramas, how a Chinese entertainment phenomenon became a global obsession, whether it can sustain interest, and how AI is reshaping the industry.
A microdrama series can run anywhere between 50 to 90 episodes in total. But because each episode only lasts a few minutes, you can binge watch the entire thing in about an hour. If you're on social media, chances are you've already scrolled past one.

**SPEAKER_4** (5:17)
TikTok started showing me these little snippets of what appeared to be a TV show question mark.