What even is a ‘microdrama’?

On Monday, Variety reported that RoseBerry Media is recutting episodes of the Australian soap opera Neighbours “into microdramas.” These clips will be available on Epis, a short-form vertical video streaming platform. Though Neighbours ran for 41 seasons from 1985 to 2025, at launch, RoseBerry is only recutting two storylines from the late aughts focused on a character played by the now-internationally famous Margot Robbie.

In a statement about the project, RoseBerry cofounder / CEO Guy Hameiri described Neighbours as “an iconic piece of television history” that’s well suited to be adapted for vertical viewing with the company’s proprietary, AI-powered production workflow. Hameiri also said that he believes the project will demonstrate how “premium vertical television will become a significant new entertainment category” — one that can help introduce new audiences to a classic series.

Variety’s framing of RoseBerry’s new vertical cut of Neighbours as a kind of microdrama is curious. Microdramas are short-form vertical videos often featuring characters who get caught up in convoluted romance plots, which makes them somewhat similar to Neighbours in terms of their shared subject matter. But unlike network television shows with sizable budgets, microdramas are produced on the cheap and crafted specifically to be consumed on mobile. And when you factor in how microdramas tend to adhere to a narrative formula that opens with intrigue and closes on melodramatic cliffhangers, it’s easy to see the format as a storytelling genre unto itself.

Over the past year, entertainment trades’ reporting has made it seem like Hollywood is ready to go all in on microdramas, and that these kinds of projects could help the industry bring much-needed production work back to Los Angeles. It’s unclear whether Variety’s phrasing is reflective of the industry’s definition of microdramas changing, or if studios are just trying to use buzzwords to drum up hype. But if microdramas really are going to be a key part of Hollywood’s future, we should probably all have a general understanding of what they actually are.

Microdramas originated in China, where they first began gaining traction around 2018 on platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou (both TikTok analogs). Kuaishou’s Unexpectedness — a satirical comedy about a man struggling to achieve his goals — was one of the first Chinese microseries to make a splash, and as the social video platforms embraced e-commerce, brands began to see microdramas as a viable way to market their products to viewers. As the audiences for microdramas grew, more Chinese film / TV production studios began producing microdramas, and by 2021, revenue from short-form video was projected to hit $500 million. That figure was expected to hit $7 billion by 2024 and $16.2 billion by 2030.

Though microdramas in all languages tend to be seen as lower-quality entertainment, their core appeal is fairly easy to grasp. The series lean heavily into well-established narrative tropes, and their stories are usually designed to leave viewers guessing about what kind of outlandish twists they’re about to see next. Microdramas’ verticality and the way they’re served up in short minuteslong segments makes them the sort of content that’s meant to be consumed through a phone screen. Microdramas’ relatively small production budgets also positioned them to become a viable way for up-and-coming actors and filmmakers to book consistent work. But in recent months, that promise has been waylaid by the spread of generative artificial intelligence.

In China especially, gen AI has had a devastating impact on the microdrama economy for human actors. Ninety-five percent of the Chinese microdramas produced in the first three months of this year were created with AI, which has led to fewer jobs and lower pay. A similar story is now playing out in Hollywood, where actors have reported being pressured by studios to sign over the rights to their digital likenesses. Though the details are somewhat different, presenting repurposed films and TV series as “microdramas” poses a similar threat to the people working in the business because of the way it cuts them out of opportunities like RoseBerry’s partnership with Epis. It’s also unclear how and whether this new vertical presentation of Neighbours might result in royalty payments to the show’s original cast and crew.

Streamers and studios’ interest in vertical content of all kinds has been driven by a desire to recapture some of the attention lost to rival platforms like TikTok and YouTube where microdramas have been able to thrive. For the most part, studios have been leading with repurposed, verticalized clips of preexisting content, which are presented in scrollable feeds that are meant to give you a preview of things that can be watched horizontally. These feeds’ content might be useful for discovery, but very much like microserialized (read: chopped-up) films and TV shows, they aren’t exactly a new entertainment format that seems worth making much noise about.

Traditional microdramas haven’t even really had a chance to live up to all the industry hype, but it feels like companies are already rushing to redefine the format as anything that happens to be short, dramatic, and vertically oriented. Platforms might be more interested in turning old shows and films into clip content because it’s less expensive than producing and building an audience for a wholly original microdrama. That doesn’t lend credence to the idea that this format can actually “save” Hollywood, though — if anything, it makes the industry seem like it’s trying to cannibalize itself.