Secret Billionaires. Age-Gap Marriages. Plenty of Revenge.

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Following a flight to New York from my Tokyo residence last year, I came across a series of short, professionally made dramas on my Instagram timeline, each lasting only a minute or two. In one titled “Money, Guns, and Merry Christmas,“, the CEO of a defense company is inquired about his income by his date. He was about to respond “Fifty or 60 million,” but she interjected, saying, “Sixty grand – I can’t believe my father set me up with someone so poor.” This misunderstanding occurs before the end of a single reel, when a woman from the bar steps in and sets the story in motion by informing the CEO that her father would disown her if she didn’t find a husband quickly. He agrees to marry her immediately, and during the holiday season, her wealthy family treats their new relative with contempt, assuming he is poor and thus worthless.

The acting and dialogue of “Money, Guns, and Merry Christmas” stood out to me more than its plot or mobile-optimized filming style. This was a unique kind of badness that reminded me of an amateur community theater production of a video game cut scene. Despite my initial hesitation after seeing the first post, I ended up watching every subsequent installment in succession.

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In China, smartphone-based stories about love and wealth have become a thriving multibillion-dollar business. As people turned to mobile entertainment during the pandemic for comfort, professionally made mini-dramas started surfacing amidst user-created content on platforms like Kuaishou and Douyin, which is ByteDance’s Chinese equivalent of TikTok. These short-form series, often called “verticals,” became so popular that by 2023, they were said to have earned a total revenue of $5.2 billion – approximately equal to 70% of the box office earnings from all movies in China.

Currently, vertical videos are gaining significant traction in the U.S., despite the setback experienced by mobile-first streaming platform Quibi, which was launched in 2020 by Jeffrey Katzenberg, a former chairman of Walt Disney Studios. Katzenberg invested over $1 billion in content for Quibi, but the company closed its doors merely six months later. In contrast, individuals like Joey Jia, CEO of Crazy Maple Studio, are finding success where Katzenberg faltered. Crazy Maple Studio has produced over a hundred vertical videos for users of their ReelShort mobile app. According to Jia, located in Sunnyvale, California, Quibi’s mistake was making their content too lengthy (10 minutes), having excessively high production budgets, and featuring well-known actors. In Jia’s words, “Quibi tried to bring Hollywood to Silicon Valley; we aim to reimagine Hollywood within Silicon Valley.

Crazy Maple Studio, based in Beijing, is supported by COL, a digital content company, and owned by Jia, an industry veteran from ZTE. According to Jia, the studio’s success in the U.S. market is primarily due to a loop they have established through their suite of mobile apps, with My Fiction being the key component. Advertised as a platform for romantic fiction on smartphones or e-readers, My Fiction serves as a self-publishing platform, a reading venue, and a digital community. This online hub has evolved into a significant source of intellectual property for Crazy Maple Studio, with their team monitoring the most popular stories on My Fiction to identify potential content for adaptation into short videos or scripts.

This observation encompasses two aspects: firstly, it explains the massive output of vertical videos from Crazy Maple Studio, coupled with their unusual, somewhat risqué titles like “Selling My Virginity to the Mafia King” and “Claimed by the Alpha I Hate“. These are part of a larger category called werewolf-romance verticals on ReelShort. Secondly, it sheds light on something initially surprising – the main audience for these microdramas on ReelShort, according to the company, is middle-aged and millennial women rather than Gen-Z users heavily engaged with TikTok. However, the company is making efforts to broaden this demographic.

ReelShort’s latest endeavor, aimed at a younger audience with less sensual content, showcases the story of Zosha Sanchez, a teenage girl, who shines in math and strives towards her goals, rather than being involved in romantic entanglements with men or supernatural beings.

It appears that many recent shows seem to tap into the Gen-Z and millennial interest in tradwives and contract marriages, particularly those with an age gap. For instance, Resisting Mr. Lloyd revolves around Clarisse, who is “disowned by her unscrupulous family” and needs money for education, while “wealthy CEO Austin Lloyd seeks a wife.” Similarly, in You Fired a Tech Genius, the main character is both fired and humiliated by his boss’s son, who is supposed to dismiss an employee named Eric Martin. However, he mistakenly fires the wrong person, causing the company to collapse. This show can be seen as symbolically representing tech enthusiasts and workers whose jobs might be at risk due to technological advancements.

As a dedicated movie enthusiast, I’ve come to realize that brevity is the soul of success in a captivating television series. Each 90-second scene must propel the narrative forward, amplify the emotional turmoil, and swiftly bring newcomers up to speed on the unfolding plot. Consequently, the characters in these bite-sized dramas rarely dance around their feelings. They speak plainly or gaze wistfully into the distance while a voiceover elucidates their inner thoughts. This often results in dialogue that seems reminiscent of soap operas penned by writers who’ve taken quite a few blows to the head.

Since vertical videos are tailored, fine-tuned, and disseminated for an audience who significantly influences their development, sometimes even during production, they provide a unique mirror of contemporary culture’s fascinations and societal norms. Viewing them is like immersing yourself in brief glimpses of the subconscious mind of a post-cinema, post-television era every 90 seconds.

On a sweltering March day, I encountered film director Cara Lawson on a makeshift set situated amidst the arid canyons of Santa Clarita, California. She was wrapping up an eight-day shoot at that time. The majority of her crew were fresh graduates from film school, full of energy and youthful enthusiasm. They were working on sets constructed with minimal resources, costing only a small fraction of the movie’s budget, which was just $250,000. A solitary mobile home served as a stand-in for an entire trailer park where the main character resides with her diligent single mother.

In many brief episodes of series such as “Never Underestimate Girl Math”, each lasting about a minute or two, the narrative often concludes with a suspenseful cliffhanger, potentially resulting in up to 70-80 plot twists. Initially, these initial episodes are accessible for free (with advertisements). However, at some point, viewers may need to pay to continue watching. Jia explains that the point where a viewer encounters a paywall is influenced by data collected from over 55 million active users of ReelShort. When a concept fails to deliver, this same data helps the company identify where viewers lost interest. In some cases, the company may invest between $300,000 and $500,000 to re-shoot underperforming productions, resulting in what might be called an “algorithm cut” – a revised version intended to increase viewer engagement. (Additionally, certain titles can also be streamed on social media platforms and websites like Daily Motion.)

In these movies, viewers usually don’t discover unexpected truths until the climax. Characters such as the undercover billionaire or secret heiress finally reveal their identities, punish their adversaries, and acknowledge the person who had faith in them throughout. However, these aren’t twist endings because they are often made clear by the film titles. For instance, there’s no mystery in “Genius Baby Gets Daddy Back” or “Found a Homeless Billionaire Husband for Christmas.” In “Never Underestimate Girl Math,” the protagonist isn’t underestimated as suggested by the title; instead, she demonstrates her genius and proves her worth. During my set visit, I discussed with executive producer Bofan Zhang that the movie plot resembles “Good Will Hunting” in reverse. Instead of being discovered, nurtured, and ultimately healed, Lawson’s working-class genius is tormented by a villain taking credit for her work and ridiculed by onlookers who doubt her math skills. This story follows a Christlike path of scapegoating and suffering, ending in comeuppance for the naysayers and doubters. On the set of “Never Underestimate Girl Math,” some actors jokingly complained about how frequently these antagonists exclaim, “How dare you!

Vertical films share many similarities with movies produced for television networks like Lifetime and Hallmark, where female characters often face danger and are saved by less renowned male leads who might resemble an A-list actor’s stand-in. However, these vertical productions are created outside the mainstream Hollywood industry. They are largely the domain of fledgling filmmakers, such as recent graduates from film school, skilled workers seeking additional income, and artists yet to fulfill the criteria for joining Hollywood’s influential unions.

The surge of verticals in Hollywood occurred due to a combination of factors: first, a drop in production caused by the pandemic, followed by labor disputes such as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. This insight was shared with me by Edoardo Novello, an assistant director working for Lawson, who relocated from Venice, Italy, four years ago to pursue film studies. By the point he could seek employment on documentaries and feature films, the available positions had nearly vanished.

Novello explained to me that everyone resorted to creating ‘verticals’ because there were no other options available,” he said, “even now as film and TV work has slightly increased, ‘verticals’ continue to be a significant source of swift earnings, comparable to freelance jobs in Hollywood.

When I stepped onto the set of Never Underestimate Girl Math, one of my escorts was Sammie Hao, who holds the position of Talent Head at Crazy Maple Studio. Since March 2022, with the studio embarking on its first ReelShort vertical, she has been tasked with supervising casting for all their productions. As we navigated our way to the set in Santa Clarita, she shared with me her experiences: “Back then, it was both simple and challenging,” Hao confided in me. “Simple because it was during a union strike, which left many actors unemployed and eagerly seeking work. Yet, it was also difficult as I had to navigate the unique dynamics of casting during such times.

Hao pointed out that the main challenge was the scarcity of professionals with relevant experience since the fields were so novel. Yet, it didn’t take much time to discover talented actors by placing ads in trade publications like Backstage, where casting calls have become predominantly for verticals, according to Hao. The limited options elsewhere in Hollywood have led to a surge of mobile microdrama production, thereby nurturing a fresh batch of talent exclusively associated with verticals. Some actors are even given exclusive contracts, hinting at the emergence of a quasi-studio system for verticals, where young women of color, such as Hao and Zhang, are disproportionately represented in management roles.

Zhang, our head producer, explained that she’s in charge of devising strategies for all ReelShort’s Los Angeles-based productions. She mentioned it’s quite demanding as she needs to manage approximately six projects simultaneously. Typically, writing a script such as “Never Underestimate Girl Math” takes about a month, and the typical filming duration is around eight days. Following that, our internal postproduction team works on visual effects, audio, and color correction. Some productions can be released merely three or four months after the initial script draft has been received by Zhang.

In March, I dropped by ReelShort’s L.A. offices to catch up with two of their most prominent actors. We had lunch in a communal area, surrounded by walls adorned with framed movie posters such as “Runaway Princess Bride” and “Surrender to My Professor”. One of these captivating microdrama stars was Marc Herrmann, known for his striking features including a defined jawline and short haircut. Before gracing ReelShort’s vertical productions like “The Double Life of a Billionaire Heiress” and “Love Me, Bite Me“, Herrmann was making waves in the made-for-TV movie scene. “When I first started”, Hermann shared about his initial experience with vertical content, “I felt like I was on one of those film sets.

Herrmann experienced some initial disagreements with Robin Wang, the director of his first ReelShort production, regarding the actor’s detailed script suggestions. At one point, Wang had to halt Herrmann and explained, “Marc, this is a vertical project, and stories are told in a specific manner due to its format.” He continued, “We can either strive to make it resemble a traditional narrative or a more conventional story, but then it will just reside in an awkward middle ground that doesn’t quite function.” When Wang conveyed this to Herrmann, he had an insight, realizing, “Ah, I understand. It makes sense. This is something new.

In just a few short years since his debut with ReelShort, Hermann has risen to a position similar to Tom Cruise in the vertical film industry. Rather than simply being an actor, he is seen as a valuable collaborator who contributes ideas on scripts and even helps shape the direction of ReelShort’s content as it expands into new genres. For instance, Hermann recently worked with R. Ellis Frazier, a well-known director of action films like “Repeater” and “As Good As Dead,” on the release of “Undercover Prison King” in April. Additionally, some experienced television directors have begun exploring the realm of verticals, according to Hermann.

He mentioned that it’s not only film students collaborating on these projects, but rather the entire industry is moving towards this area due to a unique surge during a typically quiet period for the industry. People seem to really enjoy what’s going on here.

At lunchtime, we were joined by Adam Daniel, whose mischievous grin and inky black hair brought to mind the character he played in “Move Aside! I’m the Final Boss” – Kingsley Baldwin, portrayed as a wealthy tycoon and the world’s richest man. Intriguingly, this role finds him deserted by his long-time sweetheart upon his return from war. The peculiar plot twist left me questioning if I was watching an exceptionally poor film or perhaps a fresh, innovative format.

It was layoff season,” Hao said. “Especially in tech.” The fact that 60% of the viewers were male despite ReelShort’s predominantly female audience indicates that the studio is beginning to focus on topics that appeal to men, just as it has successfully created content from female-focused genres like fantasy and romance.

Any insights gained from audience reactions to You Fired a Tech Genius will likely be used to improve other male-oriented verticals (video series), resulting in more data-driven feedback loops.

The question raised by the current trend in media is quite clear, yet unsettling: Have we become too simple-minded, too lacking in taste, and too impulsive to appreciate what was once considered popular entertainment? I believe the reason lies more in the evolution of cinema culture than in the influence of internet culture. To put it simply, Hollywood no longer serves as a reliable source for portraying our contemporary state, which directors like Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg used to dissect through their big-budget films. Today, the big screen is managed by gatekeepers who appear more focused on rehashing the themes of the comic book’s golden era while seemingly unaware of how the internet has fragmented and specialized audiences into smaller niches, with their interests being catered to in increasingly specific newsletters, podcasts, and TikToks. If movies represent a diminishing remnant of monoculture, then ReelShort is the app that demonstrates what’s thriving instead: a myriad of self-selected microcultures.

Herrmann shared with me that the comments on Lifetime movies are often harshly critical, with phrases like “the acting is terrible,” or “the writing is poor.” He expressed a sense of frustration, saying something like, “Wow, really?” In contrast, he said, the fans of ReelShort projects are overwhelmingly positive and supportive. They’re kind, they appreciate it, and there’s a warm feeling that comes from creating something that people truly enjoy.

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2025-06-05 14:55