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We have started leaving conversations on cliffhangers now, walking away mid-sentence just to see if anyone follows up. Nobody does. The format has ruined us for normal goodbyes.
CandyJar's parent is launching a fully AI action app
Romance built the microdrama business. Now the company behind CandyJar wants to see whether artificial intelligence (AI) can build the rest of it. Inkitt, CandyJar's parent, unveiled Ironblood on June 2, a separate app pitched as the first that is AI-native and built exclusively for action, superhero, and sci-fi. To be clear, this is not CandyJar's existing slate switching over, it is a new sibling app generated entirely by AI.
The app opens July 15 with a promise of 30 new titles every month, four trailers are already live, and sign-ups are open. The number Inkitt founder Ali Albazaz keeps repeating is the one that matters: AI, he says, cuts the cost of producing this content by roughly 99 percent. And Inkitt is not a fringe outfit making that claim, it is backed by Khosla Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and Kleiner Perkins, and it spent years tuning an AI pipeline on romance and fantasy before aiming it at explosions.
Whether audiences stay for AI-built superheroes is the open question. The cost math behind them is no longer hypothetical.
Why this matters for you: If you write action, genre, or sci-fi, the romance-only ceiling just cracked, and there is suddenly demand for the kind of stories vertical used to call too expensive. If you earn your living on live-action action sets, read that 99 percent the other way, because it is the number every platform accountant is now staring at. Know which side of the cost curve your next pitch sits on.
Sources: C21Media · EIN Presswire · TheWrap
🇺🇸 United States
1. The Bold and the Beautiful's showrunner is making his first microseries. Bradley Bell, executive producer and head writer of the daytime soap, is producing Hollywood Starlet for aTwist (formerly MicroCo) through his Red Flair Entertainment banner, shooting at Sunset Las Palmas Studios with vertical regulars Bella Mraz, Molly Anderson, and Eric Guilmette, who also co-produces; it lands later this summer. Decades of cliffhanger craft, pointed at a phone. → Variety
2. A new report says producers are swapping actors for AI. Business Insider reports that performers who found steady microdrama work are now losing roles as some producers replace them mid-production with synthetic performers, naming AI-native shops like TrueShort and StoReel. The floor still matters here: the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) Verticals Agreement sets a base of $250 a day for leads and $164 for everyone else, and the union's newer master deal carries a penalty for using a synthetic performer instead of a real one. The catch is the Verticals Agreement is set to lapse June 30 unless it is extended. → Business Insider
3. Bob's Burgers' studio is bringing adult animation to vertical. Fox Entertainment Studios president Fernando Szew says Bento Box Entertainment, the animation house behind Bob's Burgers, will develop the first adult animation microseries for Holywater's My Drama. No release date yet, but it cracks the format open for animation writers, board artists, and voice actors. → TheWrap
Here's what else is new:
The industry is quietly renaming itself "microseries." As the format pushes past romance into comedy, horror, and unscripted, executives are dropping "microdrama" for a name that fits more genres, and more pitch lanes for you. → TheWrap
TheWrap maps the format's production underbelly. A long investigation digs into the punishing shoot schedules, pay disputes, and AI pressure sitting underneath the boom, worth reading before you sign anything. → TheWrap
🌐 Worldwide
1. India's Balaji bet on a "family-friendly" vertical lane. Balaji Telefilms launched Kutingg as a clean, mobile-first app after regulators forced its edgier streaming service offline, and it is planning 200-plus micro shows in six months, with tie-ins to Story TV and gaming apps WinZO and Zupee. Proof that the content crackdown is reshaping what gets greenlit, not just what gets pulled. → Exchange4media
2. A Hong Kong production house is scaling vertical across Southeast Asia. AR Asia Productions is upsizing into multi-genre microseries and feeding originals to Indonesia's Vidio and Thailand's TrueVision Now, with CEO Anne Chan targeting five Southeast Asian markets by year-end. A reminder that the supply chain is going regional, fast. → ContentAsia
3. Follow-up: Shanghai's micro-drama push opens this week, and AI is on the main stage. The Multiverse Micro-Drama Project we flagged last month goes live as the Shanghai International Film Festival opens June 12, paired with a Shanghai TV Festival forum titled "Riding the AI Wave: The Path To Exquisite Micro-Dramas" and a market window June 20 to 23 for pitches and trailer screenings. China is steering the format toward quality and putting AI front and center while it does. → Shanghai International Film Festival
Here's what else is new:
Indonesia's Telkomsel is bundling a vertical app into its telco packs. The carrier has wired the FlexTV microdrama app into data bundles, the kind of distribution shortcut that puts series in front of millions without an ad budget. → ContentAsia
Africa stood up its first vertical drama academy. Co-founded by Ifeoma Oma Areh and Elijah Affi, the continent's first institution built around microdrama production has begun operations, aiming to train a homegrown vertical workforce. → BroadcastPro ME
Today's Pick
A working producer's plain-English playbook for breaking into vertical series in 2026, how to budget a micro-shoot, how to pitch one, and where the money actually sits. → Read on Producing Hollywood
Action, animation, comedy: the format opened three new shelves this week, and every one of them still needs someone who knows how to end on a hook.
Until tomorrow. Stay Vertical.
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