Vertical signed a pop-punk band. Album rollout, rewritten.

The All-American Rejects just put out their first album in 14 years, and the launch plan is a 31-episode microdrama where the band gets kidnapped and forced to finish the record on a livestream. Yes, that is the actual plot.

SuperFan, an exclusive on microdrama platform CandyJar that dropped Friday, May 22, runs viewers through what the band calls "basement captivity to full-blown livestream chaos" as the group is held by a deranged fan demanding new music. Episodes drop in free batches, with subscribers getting the full binge. CandyJar, the United States platform owned by self-publishing company Inkitt, says about 80 million episodes are watched on it each month. The crew behind the cameras reads like a feature credit list, Clueless costume designer Mona May, And Just Like That veteran Chris Collins, Welcome to Wrexham producer John Salcido and music-video and microdrama director Michael Reich. CandyJar and the band have already signed a second project, a romance-forward original movie, so this is not a one-off bet. Frontman Tyson Ritter pitched the move bluntly. "Being the first musicians in this space makes me feel like the monkey in orbit. Next stop, the moon."

Sources: Deadline · Yahoo Entertainment · True Hollywood Talk · Rolling Stone

1. Khosla, Katzenberg and A24 just put USD 12 million into AI-native verticals. TrueShort, an artificial intelligence (AI) native vertical film startup, closed a USD 12 million seed round led by Keith Rabois at Khosla Ventures, with Jeffrey Katzenberg, Scott Belsky, Ravi Nandan of A24, Brian Halligan and General Catalyst all writing checks. The startup says it can spin up a one to three minute AI episode for around USD 1,000 to USD 3,000 per title, and reported about USD 2 million in annualized revenue in under six months. Translation: the cheap end of the cost curve just got a lot more investor attention, and "AI native" is officially an investment category. → Business Insider

2. COL Group raids Disney and Paramount to build out FlareFlow. China-listed microdrama giant COL Group bumped Timothy Oh to chief marketing officer (CMO) of FlareFlow on top of his international business job, brought in ex-Paramount and Hulu executive Jason Ander as Head of United States Partnerships, and named ex-Disney and Canal+ executive Eileen Low as Head of Partnerships and Sales for Asia. Oh framed the push as "Vertical 2.0," moving FlareFlow beyond romance into live-action originals, creator-led stories, branded entertainment and selective AI productions. For pitchers, that is shorthand for new genres and creator-led packages finally getting through the door. → Deadline

3. A Maine ad agency just made brands the protagonist on a vertical app. Portland, Maine outfit Via Agency announced a partnership with Tommy Harper's VeYou platform to build out brand-funded microdramas where the brand is the story, not a sponsorship slot dropped into someone else's script. The first series goes live in the third quarter, with new chief creative officer Matt O'Rourke running it, and Via says the model is now a real new-business tool with most of its existing roster opting in. If you write or direct, this is the next door to walk through. Treat it like a feature spec where one of the leads happens to be a brand. → MediaPost

1. A Nasdaq logistics company just bought a Southeast Asian AI vertical for USD 70. Globavend Holdings (Nasdaq: GVH) signed a definitive agreement on May 15 to acquire 70% of Singapore-based Loomi Entertainment for a nominal USD 70, with the deal set to close on or before May 22. Loomi runs the Loomi: Short Drama app and a proprietary AI production platform called Imaginary, with operations across Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The price tag is the headline, but the real story is a public US-listed company quietly walking out with a region-specific vertical and an end-to-end AI pipeline for less than the price of dinner. → GlobeNewswire

2. China's AI vertical boom just hit its portrait rights moment. New reporting puts the Chinese AI microdrama machine at more than 10,000 titles a month since the start of 2026, with around 50,000 AI-native episodes hitting Douyin in March alone, and the fully AI-made saga Master of Feng Shui crossing 100 million views in 12 hours. Now two people, a model-influencer and a hanfu stylist, say their likenesses were used without consent in The Peach Blossom Hairpin on ByteDance-owned Hongguo, and they are pursuing legal action over portrait rights and reputation rights. China's Cyberspace Administration is closing a public comment period on draft AI digital-person rules this month. Worth tracking: the regulator that has moved fast on the rest of the AI stack is about to set the floor for face and voice use on vertical content, and what gets written in Beijing usually gets exported. → Tech Times

3. ABS-CBN is putting its diaspora on a microdrama feed. The Philippines' biggest broadcaster rolled out a global "Together Forever" campaign on May 20 built around streaming service iWant and Kapamilya Online Live, its YouTube entertainment channel with roughly 55 million subscribers. iWant's microdrama slate already includes The Chambermaid's Daughter and Runaway Love, with Miss Behave and Nurse the Dead coming soon, the latter shot in Los Angeles for the overseas Filipino audience. If you write Filipino-coded stories or work the diaspora beat, the largest distributor in Southeast Asia just opened a vertical shelf for them. → Manila Bulletin

A Star Wars and Top Gun: Maverick producer sat down for 19 minutes to argue Hollywood is not late to vertical, it is choosing to watch the train leave. Worth a read before your next pitch meeting. → Read on Real Reel

Turns out the best album promo of 2026 is getting kidnapped on camera.

Until tomorrow. Stay Vertical.