Happy Friday! You picked the right week to be paying attention, so let's get into it.
The microdrama studio hiring like a network
aTwist, the microdrama platform run by ex-Showtime president Jana Winograde, former NBCUniversal Television chair Susan Rovner, and former WME and ABC Entertainment head Lloyd Braun, just made three hires that look an awful lot like a network buildout. The studio brought in Josh Silberman, currently the showrunner on CBS's America's Culinary Cup, as its exclusive unscripted producing partner. Silberman's resume also includes Foodtastic and Fear Factor, so he is squarely a reality TV veteran. Lisa Roos joined as President, Creative. Jamie Denenberg took Head of Production. All of this lands roughly a week after aTwist's deal with BET to make microseries for both linear cable and a forthcoming summer mobile app, with each title getting a first-run window on BET before flipping to vertical. That's the first windowing strategy any microdrama company has tried, and it borrows directly from the theatrical and pay-TV playbooks. aTwist is also pushing well past the soapy romance formula that defines the category, with a slate covering anime, true crime, thrillers, horror, comedy, and now unscripted.
Why this matters for you: If you're a creator, writer, or producer who wrote off vertical as a low-rent format, the calculus is changing fast. The exec talent moving in does not chase soap opera money. They chase categories with room to scale, and the budgets are now backed by people who can write big checks.
Sources: Deadline · Hollywood Reporter · TheWrap · C21Media
United States first, then we go global.
🇺🇸 United States
1. Peacock pulls Bravo into the mobile-vertical app this summer. At the NBCUniversal upfront, Peacock unveiled two Bravo originals built vertical-first: Campus Confidential: Miami and Salon Confessionals with Madison LeCroy, each clocking around 60 episodes at 60 to 90 seconds. The first true unscripted microdrama slate from a major US streamer.Peacock will also license a batch of scripted titles from ReelShort. → Variety
2. TelevisaUnivision's Micros crosses 1 billion views and ramps to 100 titles. ViX's vertical short-form layer has added more than 1 billion views and grew 48% quarter over quarter. The company will produce 100 microdrama titles this year, up from 40 in 2025, and is aiming for 300 within a few years. One ViX Micros title, De Pordiosero a Millonario, hit 42 million views in weeks. → StreamTV Insider
3. Issa Rae's vertical thriller "Screen Time" passes 100 million views as Act 2 drops. Hoorae Media's first microdrama for TikTok and the PineDrama app crossed 100 million views inside its opening week, the highest seven-day watch time of any series on the platform. Act 2 drops today. More Hoorae microseries are on the way under the TikTok content deal. → TheWrap
🌐 Worldwide
1. Catchplay teams with Korea's heavyweights for premium vertical K-drama. Taiwan's streamer announced a multi-pronged Korean push at its tenth-anniversary event: an exclusive branded zone across Taiwan, Indonesia, and Singapore with Sero, Korea's newly launched vertical platform, plus licensing from CJ ENM and b.able and a co-development partnership with SLL Joongang (the former JTBC Studios) for premium Mandarin-language verticals. Korean actors are in the talent pool too. Catchplay chief executive Daphne Yang's framing: premium, not soapy. → Deadline
2. Globo orders a vertical soccer microdrama tied to Brazil's World Cup run. Globoplay's August launch, Quando o Coração Entra em Campo, follows a Rio center-forward making the preliminary squad for Brazil's national team. Fifty episodes of about two minutes each, shooting in June via Estúdios Globo. One of the splashier creator-side commissions out of Brazil this year. → Variety
3. India gets a daily-release vertical format. Story TV launched Story TV Dailies on Thursday, an open-ended serialised format with new episodes dropping every day, billed as a first for the Indian micro-drama sector. The opening slate (Jinn Ki Dulhan, Magic Pen Wala Hero, Mast Maula Zindagi) covers mythology, fantasy, and mystery, genres that vertical has barely touched. Soap-opera cadence, vertical-native packaging. → Social Samosa
Today's Pick
Variety's recap of Thursday's HRTS panel surfaces what four format execs are actually seeing on the ground: a 48-hour concept-to-camera pace, an audience of women aged 30 to 60 that mainstream TV has underserved for years, and a writers and actors pipeline that keeps growing. Worth a read for any creator pricing their next pitch. → Read in Variety
The phone has a development slate now.
Until tomorrow. Stay Vertical.