DramaBox

Yeah.

So K is currently a creative producer at DramaBox, and before that she was at Good Short.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and she really kind of started on the ground floor, um, having come from, like, sort of a prestigious, uh, filmmaker background.

Jiang later emerged as a leading executive in the vertical microdrama space, serving as an executive producer at two of the category's leading platforms.

At Good Short, she produced four of the platform's 10 most commercially successful titles.

She now produces exclusively for DramaBox, where she has produced multiple hit series that have contributed to the platform's top grossing performance through the first three quarters of 2026.

Across her work, the titles she has produced have gener- generated more than two billion combined views.

More on budget.

I know DramaBox said they were still capping their budgets at $200,000.

Do you see an increase in any of your budgets? Yes, we do.

So it just depends on the platform.

... traditionally the delivery method has been like they have, you know, a lot of these are, like, uh, soap opera drama style verticals that, you know.

Um, so they have things like DramaBox.

So what they'll do is they'll film, you know, it, it amounts to essentially what's like a feature film, but then they break it up into 60 one to two-minute episodes, and they'll offer you several for free.

And then by the time you get to, you know, whatever, the third, fourth, fifth, it's, you know, oh, well, a dollar for the next episode, a dollar for the, you know.

But you, do you think the people who are making micro dramas today have some special skill set that's gonna, uh, create a moat for them and that's gonna allow them to run a sustainable business?

I do, especially the ones that are leading the charge, companies like ReelShort, like Drama, um, DramaBox, Candy Jar, um, Holy Water Tech, a company out of Europe in which, uh, Fox became an investment last year.

Many of them have connections to the world of web novels that they use as their initial source of IP-

Mm-hmm

So it just shows how quickly this cycle is happening.

You look at these platforms like DramaBox, ReelShort, and the number of new live action shows that they're, they're rolling out seems to be fewer and fewer, whereas the number of AI shows they're rolling out is climbing rapidly.

The industry may be facing challenges around jobs and costs, but the appetite for short-form storytelling continues to grow.

Analysts estimate it will reach $26 billion by 2030.

I mean, I actually first started seeing microdramas a couple years ago on TikTok.

They're like serialized bite-sized TV shows that post segments on TikTok, and then usually you have to pay to see the full thing on another site, like Reelshort, DramaBox, and Pine Drama.

My husband, he's always pulling me in to be like, "Watch this story about this woman who woke up from a coma and is forced to marry her billionaire childhood friend-"

[laughs]

Are they?

The last several films that I've been on, whether it's DramaWave, DramaBox, I've been on several recently, and they're shooting it both ways.

Yeah.

They're shooting it horizontal, and they're shooting it vertical.

Well, and the other, the other thing-

And not expensive

... and the other thing about the AI, you know, we talk, we're still on AI for a little bit here, um, it seems to me that the bigger platforms, the DramaBoxes and the FlareFlows and the Reel Shorts, those are the guys that have done more AI than the independents.

Like, if you look at Shara.TV or Viu or Moopix or any of the newer platforms that are coming out that are more Western platforms versus the, uh, the Asian market, uh, platforms, they're not doing mu- they're doing hybrid.

And I'm like, how is this on TikTok right now? But it's giving a little snippet and then you have to click the ad and go to the full series.

It's kind of like Drama Box vibes.

I love Drama Box.

That's Nixon's thing, right? Bro, honestly, man.

But it's like...