Filmart: How the China-Led “Vertical Film” Movement Wants to Upend the Way We See Cinema
- China's vertical short drama trend, shot with a vertical orientation for smartphone viewing, is predicted to be worth $14 billion annually.
China's vertical short drama boom took center stage on Hong Kong Filmart's opening day, with a collection of the creatives driving the trend extolling the opportunities being offered in a market they predict will soon be worth around $14 billion annually.
"The rise of this format means that there are a lot of audiences who haven't been satisfied by the current supply of the media market," said Zhou Yuan, founder and CEO of the Beijing-based vertical film production house Content Republic.
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For the uninitiated, the phase "vertical short drama" refers to series shot with a vertical rather than horizontal orientation so they can more easily be viewed on smartphones.
They first emerged on Snapchat and Instagram Stories before being picked up by the likes of the California-based ReelShort and Singapore's DramaBox platforms. More recently, Chinese creators have come to dominate the market as TikTok and its Chinese equivalent Douyin have latched onto the trend, which is now also being explored by Chinese streamers such as iQIYI, platforms that had previously opted for more tradition longform series.
Usually, the vertical series come in batches of 70-odd short scenes lasting one or two minutes, and they are increasingly finding a global audience, drawn — like audiences in China — to "quick, oversimplified stories of love, wealth, betrayal and revenge, sometimes featuring mythical creatures like vampires and werewolves," according to the Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times .
"Of course, no matter the settings of the works, all the male characters inevitably fall in love with the female protagonist," the Global Times reported.
China-based industry watchers iMedia Research have estimates that the vertical short drama market will be worth more than $13.8 billion (RMB100 billion) by 2027, up from $5.2 billion (RMB37.39 billion) in 2023.
So it was no surprise Monday's Co-Create the Future: Vertical Short Drama's Global Opportunity Awaits session at Filmart played to a packed and enthralled audience.
Alongside Zhou, speakers included Content Republic's head of talent, Ashley Zhang, Australian vertical drama production house founder Selina Yurou Zhang, and Nic Westaway, a onetime star of the long-running Australian TV series Home and Away and now a feature of a number of hit vertical series, including The Double Life of Mr President .
"While in a feature [film] you might get one car accident, one kidnapping, one slap, one gunfight, fistfight, or whatever it is, in a vertical in like eight days [of shooting] you get all of that," said Westaway. "In Australia, I played one character for nearly four years, nearly 400 episodes; but in the last nine months I've got to play 14 different characters in 14 different crazy verticals."
Content Republic currently has an estimated 60 shows being shot at any one time all over the world, from Los Angeles to Australia, with a focus on rom-coms and CEO shows (built around the lives of business leaders). The series are usually produced by a two-camera crew and completed in around one to three weeks. The general rule is that there should be a "cliffhanger" moment every 30 seconds.
According to Content Republic, the original IPs come from China, but the series are being adapted for local audiences, while the company has two platforms of its own for screening the series — Best Short and Soda TV — and is quite obviously on the hunt for international production partners.
"At the moment there's a lack of real professionals; I mean, from the directors, actors, and actresses," said Zhou. "And we want to work in a very professional way in developing this business."
The company aims to have 400 vertical dramas in production each year — 200 for the domestic Chinese market and 200 for an international audience — and Zhou claimed there were already more than 400 million people in China who consume more than 30 minutes of the genre daily.
Chinese vertical drama filmmakers are also quickly adapting to new technology, with Douyin and another Chinese shortform platform, Kuaishou, last year releasing series created via Artificial Intelligence (AI). Zhou claimed AI would cut production turnaround for each series made to just seven days.
Among the biggest global hits has been the XXL Size Wife franchise — the storyline follows a plus-size woman who loses weight and seeks revenge on those who've scorned her — which has been remade from its original Chinese into eight languages, including English, Arabic and Portuguese.
"They really captivate you," says Zhou. "It's like they are filling a natural need for high drama."
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