Five years ago the British-Australian actor Teig Sadhana was walking dogs for a living in Melbourne. Now the 29-year-old is working on shoots where he is paid $1,000 a day — enough to live comfortably in New York. “Casting directors are reaching out to me from all across the film and television industry,” he says. His golden ticket? Roles in micro-dramas, also known as vertical dramas, or “verticals” — cliff-hanger-heavy one-minute episodes that originated in China, which are designed to be watched on smartphones and are taking off worldwide.
Filmed in a vertical format, micro-dramas draw viewers in by letting them watch a few episodes before charging them about $26 a week to see the rest. In China revenue surpassed the cinema box office last year, reaching $6.9 billion. Outside China it was $1.2 billion, with 60 percent coming from America, especially the Silicon Valley-based app ReelShort. The dramas are also on the rise in the UK, with production companies popping up to take advantage of the increasing demand from China. It is a welcome source of income during a time of budget squeezes after pandemic shutdowns and actors’ strikes. In the UK there was a 22 percent drop in domestic high-end TV commissions in 2024 and a 50 percent drop in international co-productions.
