microdrama

The microdrama industry is growing steadily. And of course, those generated by AI grow much faster. So much so that the demand is already leading to the creation of tools that allow the viewer to generate their own programs. The StoReel platform has built a tool designed exactly for that, and it already pays whoever uses it. The results are not yet perfect, but it is inevitable to wonder what will happen when anyone (in theory) can be showrunner. Choose your own microdrama. At the end of June, StoReel presented Canvasa tool that turns a microdrama script into a complete series: characters, settings, voices and editing generated by artificial intelligence from start to finish. The web TheWrap tried it firsthand with a parody of the Prime Video series ‘Off Campus’: four episodes, four days of work and 288 credits ($150) just to generate the characters, with additional payments every time one did not fit the desired look. How things turned out. The result was half convincing, it seemed. There are very competent shots and others with that artificial point that reveals the synthetic actor: strange pauses between phrases, glances that are held too long, some jumps raccord where a character changes position without the camera justifying it… And even with those flaws, StoReel does not sell it as a mere experiment: it has just closed a financing round of 34 million dollars and builds its business model around what it calls PUGC, that is, professional user-generated content. Anyone can produce a series and charge for it if StoReel decides to distribute it. The first successes. The numbers used by the company itself help to understand the bet. Its ‘OMG! My Snowwhite Is a Man’, produced entirely with AI, reached a cost per installation (what the company pays in advertising, crossed with each new download) of $4.63 compared to the usual $8-10 for its live-action series. And its catalog of more than 80 series generated with AI retains 22% more audience after a week than its traditional productions. These are figures from StoReel itself, so you have to take them with a grain of salt, but they perfectly explain why the company prefers to pay its audience rather than expand its staff of scriptwriters. Origins of the micro. Microdrama, one- to two-minute episodes designed to be watched in one go on a mobile phone, is a type of digital content that was born in China under the name duanju and now has been conquering markets outside of Asia for more than a year. Sector figures vary greatly depending on who calculates them. Phylicia Koh, partner at Play Ventures and investor in StoReel, estimates the global market at $14 billion and compares it to the disruption that ‘Roblox’ caused in video games. Axios, on the other hand, calculated that the business outside of China had a turnover of $3 billion in 2025, almost triple that of the previous year. This appetite also explains movements of much larger platforms: Disney+ is going to start experimenting with its own vertical videos to retain an audience that no longer wants to sit for two hours in front of a screen. StoReel, however, goes further: it wants to turn its own audience into a staff of scriptwriters. It’s not the first. StoReel is not the only company that has brought artificial intelligence into the writers’ room. Holywater, the Ukrainian company behind My Drama, launched its own tool more than a year ago: My Muse turns stories from its book catalog into series with the help of models like Midjourney or Runway, but the process is in the hands of filmmakers specialized in AI selected by the company itself. StoReel’s tool boasts even greater openness, although with nuances: the tool refused to generate characters with the exact faces of the ‘Off Campus’ actors when TheWrap asked it to, a limit that StoReel presents as a safeguard against lawsuits over image rights. The system, however, did not raise any objection when the script generated for the experiment reproduced Elle Kennedy’s novel ‘Immune to You’ (third in the saga on which Prime Video is based) almost scene by scene.’ At some point in the process the last name of the author mentioned on screen changed, from Steinbeck to Steinberg, without TheWrap being able to explain whether it was a model error or an attempt to avoid rights problems. In Xataka | One-minute episodes, crazy plots and millions of views: welcome to the era of microdramas