The weekend of September 5th and 6th hosted the Asian Series Festival in Paris. Dedicated to short dramas, the event spotlighted creators and actors from the audiovisual industry during exclusive conferences. During those two days, professionals and Asian content enthusiasts discovered the behind-the-scenes of vertical dramas. AAI’s team attended the masterclass of Wenwen Han, a popular Chinese actress and founder of Short Drama Alliance platform.
The birth of a new format: the “duanju”
The past few years encountered a gradual change on the smallest screens. Short and addictive, duanjus entered the market in 2023 and have been achieving a strong success since the U.S. release of The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband (2023). Born in China, this concept uses a unique formula: a vertical production, short episodes lasting less than two minutes and soap opera-ish themes around adultery, money and power.
Available through social media like Tiktok and YouTube, these micro-series frequently show advertising clips before redirecting viewers to a platform, explained Wenwen Han, Short Drama Alliance platform’s CEO. To keep its audience entertained, the first episode needs to efficiently settle the plot and its stakes before ending on a cliffhanger. Once the viewers are captivated, they scroll freely through the episodes until a paywall interrupts their binge-watching. In China, the concept is already thriving; the duanjus market is worth 60 billion yuan in 2025, or about 8.3 billion dollars. “The market is huge; around half of the Chinese population watches duanju, equivalent to 600 million people”, added Wenwen Han.
A low-cost production
The major asset of short dramas is the cheapness of their production. Vertically produced, these series can be filmed with a smartphone to limit the material cost. The takes are brief, the shooting is fast, and the narrative structures are reused according to the success of previous scenarios. This mass production system now uses artificial intelligence tools to get rid of set-design expenses, to generate teasers, and to automatically translate the episodes.
Some platforms even go as far as abandoning their human actors in order to move toward AI characters. But according to Wenwen Han, this phenomenon is not a majority yet among the platforms. When asked how AI is involved in her productions, she argues that a big part of the audience is still reluctant to watch AI characters. To the SDA’s CEO, the replacement of actors in micro-series is not imminent because of the support they receive from the viewers and the industrial professionals.
A threat to horizontal dramas?
Are traditional series threatened? Normally, there should not be any competition between the two formats. Whereas horizontal series are made for long and attentive viewing, vertical dramas are thought of for light and fast consumption. The two goals are drastically opposite, and short dramas actually borrowed our screen time from SNS. Rather than a switch, it would be appropriate to consider these new contents as “transmedia” encompassing plural media at the same time.
In Europe, repetitive scenarios are turning out to be a major drawback to the spread of vertical dramas. By always recycling the same narrative patterns, the industry appears to lack diversity. That is the observation of Wei Fangdan, Beijing Going Global’s founder, in Duanju France’s documentary. Specialized in international business expansion, he shares about productions’ reticence to innovate due to unfamiliarity with locals’ norms: “Internationally, Chinese companies are still reluctant to explore this diversity. This is a challenge they must overcome”. In 2026, the duanju market is estimated at 210 million dollars in Europe, while it reaches 1.5 billion dollars in the U.S., elaborated Wenwen Han.
France on the path for diversity
During the Asian Series Festival, Emmanuelle Amelin, founder of 5 Oceans Entertainment, revealed her new project. Involved in Asian entertainment, she showcases Asia and its artists in France. In her conference about the growth of Boys’ Love and Girls’ Love, the president of 5 Oceans Entertainment announced that, in turn, she would begin producing vertical dramas. Inspired by duanjus, her productions are, however, intended to be more polished with a focus on musical and screenplay quality. Inclusion and diversity are both fundamental principles to Emmanuelle Amelin; thus, she plans to feature LGBT themes, bringing the missing colors to the vertical series world.
Reporter Naya V.
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Credit : © Kaikai photographie