China’s microdramas go big with racy plot lines, one 60-second episode at a time | Canada Voices

Su Zihang doesn’t have an IMDb page, but if he did, it would be a long one.

The Beijing-based casting director specializes in microdramas, one-to-two-minute-long soap operas that have transformed the Chinese TV industry and are increasingly popular overseas.

Last year, Mr. Su worked on more than 20 projects, casting as many as 200 actors and extras at a time.

“Most microdramas nowadays wrap filming in about a week,” he told The Globe and Mail. “Premium microdramas might take around 10 days.”

An entire season might run as much as 160 minutes, about the length of the average Hollywood movie, but streamed in tiny slices, with drama, cliffhangers and shocking twists galore to keep viewers watching. Many are shot vertically, designed to be consumed the same way someone would watch an Instagram reel or YouTube short.

“The biggest edge microdramas have over traditional TV is the pacing,” said Judy Huang, an art teacher in Zhejiang province, who happily admitted being addicted to the form. “For those of us with stressful lives, it’s a perfect fit − you don’t have to sit through 40 minutes of filler just to get to the good bit.”

Small screens, big opportunities: The rise of micro-content

When microdramas first appeared on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, in 2018, many were poorly produced and the acting was bad. But they hooked viewers with racy plot lines and constant action and began attracting real money. Today, many are indistinguishable at first glance from a high-budget movie or TV show.

Last year, one of the most popular shows, My 18-year-old Great-Grandma, which tells the story of a woman from the 1950s transported into the body of a contemporary teenager, attracted more than 4.6 billion views across its 90-episode first season, according to data platform Enlightent.

While creators have been uploading short series online since the dawn of internet video, China has industrialized the production of microdramas, and in 2024, the market overtook the country’s national box office revenue for the first time, hitting 50.5-billion yuan ($10.5-billion), according to the China Television Drama Production Industry Association. By next year, it could surpass 85-billion yuan, generating millions of jobs across all levels of production and marketing.

Audiences outside China are growing too. Market research firm Omdia has estimated that Chinese microdramas generated about US$3-billion in overseas revenue last year, with the U.S. being the biggest international market. Mobile usage data from Sensor Tower shows that, in 2025, U.S. viewers spent an average of 35 minutes a day on microdrama app ReelShort, more than on Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+, none of which topped 30 minutes.

Some critics see microdramas as yet another example of companies coming up with content to keep people stuck to their phones, swiping up through a near-endless stream of episodes, each designed to hook the viewer and keep them watching.

Hollywood has taken note. Both Disney and Netflix have rolled out short-form vertical video feeds, though for now these primarily serve clips from longer shows and movies rather than original content. And microdramas are increasingly popping up on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

One U.S. film executive was ahead of the curve − but in the worst way possible: The success of microdramas is arguably a vindication of the much-maligned short-form video service Quibi, launched with great fanfare by DreamWorks executive Jeffrey Katzenberg in early 2020.

Quibi − a portmanteau of “quick” and “bites” − posited that users would pay for high-quality dramas and reality shows broken down into 10-minute episodes. But the service shut down after just six months, with executives partly blaming the pandemic, which meant potential viewers were not commuting to work or standing in line at coffee shops, two of Quibi’s prime use cases.

Last year, Fox invested an undisclosed sum in My Drama, a platform that carries both Chinese- and English-language microdramas, while NBC’s Peacock app is working with Bravo to produce 60-to-90-second-long reality shows. Among the first, Campus Confidential: Miami, which promises to “pull back the curtain on college life.”

The most popular Chinese microdramas are elaborately written romances and soaps.

Many have a strong connection to online fan-fiction or short-fiction communities. Mr. Su is currently casting an adaptation of I Have Land in the Year 1958, in which a 21st-century office worker returns to the time of the Great Leap Forward and must learn to become self-reliant amid widespread food shortages.

One reason microdramas are so profitable is that they can be produced far more cheaply and efficiently than a standard TV show. At the Zuiku International Cultural and Creative Park in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, producers can rent a set for just 500 yuan ($105) an hour or the entire park for 6,000 yuan ($1,251) a day, said employee Bu Ting.

But Ms. Bu said the park has seen a drop in rentals in the past year, as increased competition among platforms has pushed production houses to cut costs by reducing the number of locations, cutting back on background actors and leaning on artificial intelligence.

Mr. Su said fully AI-generated microdramas are rare, but there has been an increase in hybrid productions, in which the leads are played by real people but extras and minor characters are generated by AI.

Speaking as a casting professional, he said, there is no comparison between AI and human performers. “It’s just not good enough yet.”

Ms. Huang agreed. If it’s an animated short, “AI is fine, but for human stories, I need real people in it.”

“As AI becomes more common, authenticity becomes more of a luxury,” she said. “Watching a digital puppet try and act feels like I’m being treated like a three-year-old.”

Despite a backlash from actors and writers, and criticism from some fans, many Chinese microdrama platforms are all in on AI, pumping out dozens of computer-generated dramas a day. The audience for such content is projected to reach 280 million this year, according to Chinese market research firm DataEye.

Despite the challenges presented by AI, Mr. Su said China’s microdrama industry “is still in a period of explosive growth.”

Much of that content is also being watched overseas, a rare soft power win for China’s entertainment industry, which has watched enviously for a decade now as South Korea took over the global entertainment market.

“China pioneered this sector, while foreign markets are still catching up and learning from us,” Mr. Su said. “I’d say China is definitely leading the way.”

With reports from Alexandra Li in Beijing