How Two-Minute Microdramas Became a Billion-Dollar Industry

没人要的演员,凭啥让数亿人上头?

Big Take

2026-08-27

25 分钟
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Microdramas — mini soap operas designed to be watched on your phone — have become one of the fastest-growing forms of entertainment in the world. On today’s Big Take Asia podcast, host K. Oanh Ha speaks with Bloomberg’s Yang Yang and Bloomberg Businessweek’s Christopher Beam about how millions got hooked on the medium, the challenges studios face as they try to reach new audiences and how AI could transform it all. Read more: China Has the World Hooked on Two-Minute MicrodramasChina Brought 90-Second Microdramas to the US. Now Hollywood Wants In We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. Hosted by K. Oanh Ha; Produced by Naomi Ng and Victor Swezey; Reported by Yang Yang and Christopher Beam; Edited by Paddy Hirsch and Crispina Robert. Fact-checking by Victor Swezey; Engineering by Alex Sugiura and Sean Carter. Senior Producer: Naomi Shavin. Deputy Executive Producer: Julia Weaver. Executive Producer: Nicole Beemsterboer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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  • Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, Radio, News.

  • Casey Sser was chasing an acting career in Los Angeles.

  • He was balancing a full-time job as a personal trainer with occasional acting gigs.

  • Then one day, he got the kind of phone call that anyone trying to break into the industry dreads.

  • My agent and manager at the time in 2023 were like,

  • hey, you know, we think you're great but this just isn't happening.

  • You know, we're going to let you go.

  • Casey says he didn't let the bad news stop him.

  • The next day, he started looking for auditions on his own

  • and ended up being cast as the lead in a new series called Faded to My Forbidden Alpha.

  • It was about an orphan maid who falls in love with a werewolf who also happens to be super rich.

  • The series began shooting almost right away.

  • It wasn't tied to a big name studio or streaming platform.

  • It was for a mobile app he'd never heard of.

  • People would say like, what did you just shoot?

  • And I'm like, oh, it's like a short form episodic.

  • And they're like, what's that? And I was like, I actually don't know.

  • What Casey didn't realize was that he'd stumbled into one of the fastest growing forms of entertainment: microdramas.

  • Microdramas are essentially mini soap operas meant to be watched on your phone.

  • They're shot vertically, run roughly 1 to 3 minutes, and they are chock full of over-the-top drama and camp.