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Our camera roll is now about 40% screenshots of microdrama plot twists we wanted to remember and roughly 3% actual memories. The phone has quietly reorganized our priorities, and we let it.
The format that fights theaters is now playing in them
The phone-sized story just walked into the multiplex. aTwist, the microseries studio from former Showtime president Jana Winograde, ex-NBCUniversal content chair Susan Rovner and former ABC Entertainment chairman Lloyd Braun, has struck a deal with National CineMedia (NCM) to put its vertical originals into movie-theater pre-shows. The reach is real: more than 18,500 screens across over 1,650 theaters this year, with each preview closing on a Quick Response (QR) code that sends you to the aTwist app to finish the story. NCM and aTwist say brands can sponsor the originals or commission their own, and aTwist, which also makes artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted series, is still aiming for a summer launch. NCM calls it the first time vertical-first storytelling plays on the big screen, which is a polite way of saying the format that competes with theaters now opens for them.
Why this matters for you: A brand-new shelf just opened, and it is 18,500 screens wide. If you make vertical work, your 90-second hook can now run in front of a paying, popcorn-holding audience, then hand them a QR code to keep watching. For directors, editors and writers, that is a second life for footage built for the phone, and a fresh reason for brands to fund originals instead of retrofitting ads. The brief just changed from "make it for the phone" to "make it good enough to hold a full room."
Sources: TheWrap · The Hollywood Reporter · Hastings Tribune (AP)
🇺🇸 United States
1. NBA champs are taking vertical off the court. Trevor Ariza and Matt Barnes, with Boris Kodjoe and former pro Deon Taylor, are fronting "I Am Hoop," an unscripted microdrama from Hidden Empire Film Group's new Sports Collective, following dads steering their sons through Southern California Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball. Omar Joseph directs. Proof the format has lanes well past romance, and that reality and docu producers now have a vertical buyer too. → TheWrap
2. Marketers decided anything can be a microdrama. At the StreamTV Marketers Summit outside Denver, brand and studio teams pitched the format as the new way to revive old intellectual property, with one example cutting decades of "The Bold and the Beautiful" feuds into a vertical series called "Crazy Exes Never Die" using AI. The takeaway from the room, "anything can become a microdrama if it is cut properly," is also a standing invitation to anyone who can cut.→ Media Play News
3. TikTok and Tubi are building a creator on-ramp. Fox's free streamer Tubi and TikTok have a creator-development pact designed to move short-form and vertical talent into professionally produced streaming originals, turning the swipe feed into a feeder system rather than a dead end. If you are making vertical now, that is one more door out of the algorithm and into a paid slate. → The Hollywood Reporter
Here's what else is new:
eMarketer maps Hollywood's mobile bet. A new read frames bingeable vertical dramas as Hollywood's latest mobile play, tracking why traditional players keep wading into a format they once ignored. → eMarketer
KCRW reports Hollywood is booming, vertically. A radio dispatch follows how vertical shoots are quietly putting Los Angeles crews back to work during a slow stretch for traditional production. → KCRW
AI microseries are already in your feed. A new piece documents how fully AI-made microdramas are circulating widely in the US, driving subscriptions and retention for some of the biggest platforms whether viewers clock it or not. → TheWrap
🌐 Worldwide
1. Brands get a vertical front door across Southeast Asia. At the APOS summit in Bali, China's COL Group teamed with Virtue Asia (the brand and culture arm of V47 Entertainment) to package brand-funded microdramas, vertical sponsorships and creator activations across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam, feeding COL's FlareFlow and its 33 million registered users. Six new markets where a brand brief can now turn into a paid series. → Variety
2. India's AI studio is gunning for 1,000 series a month. Dashverse, the Indian outfit behind the Frameo engine and DashReels, says it is scaling from roughly 100 AI-made microseries a month toward 1,000 by year end, pegging an hour of content near $20K against about $150K for live-action vertical. The company stresses humans still write every script and animators steer the tools, which is the line creators will want to hold them to. → TheWrap
3. Banijay's Spanish arm steps into the format. Banijay Iberia is developing a trio of vertical microdramas, the romance "F**king Honeymoon," comedy "Fortu & Jazz" and a new anime project, its first push into mobile-first short-form. One of the world's biggest production groups commissioning vertical in Spanish is another buyer worth a pitch deck. → Banijay
Here's what else is new:
France gets its own vertical voice. France's StoryTV is now pushing French-language originals like "Mon mariage avec un mâle alpha" to its own channels, a reminder the format keeps spinning up local-language production rather than only importing dubs. → StoryTV France
China pushes its industry toward "quality." State outlet People's Daily frames China's micro-drama boom as pivoting from volume to higher-craft, AI-assisted "quality works," a signal of where the world's biggest market wants the bar set. → People's Daily
Today's Pick
VertiGals is a podcast built entirely around the craft of writing vertical microdramas, and its sit-down with Second Rodeo's Scott Brown and Stacy Howard from the LA Vertical Drama Market is a clear-eyed talk on the data and where the medium goes next. → Listen on Apple Podcasts
The same story you cut for a phone might open big in a theater this summer, so write it like both screens are paying attention.
Until tomorrow. Stay Vertical.
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