ZHENGZHOU, China, Sept 21 (Askume) – On a film set that looks like the medieval palace of a Chinese king, Zhu Jian is busy making waves in the world’s second-largest film industry.
The 69-year-old actor plays the head of a wealthy family who throws a lavish party on his birthday. But neither of them knew that the maid present at the scene was his real granddaughter.
Second twist: Zhu did not make the film for the movie screen.
Grandma Moon is a micro-drama made up of vertically shot, one-minute episodes with a frequently changing plot, designed to keep millions of viewers glued to their phone screens — and make them pay more for what it costs.
“They don’t go to movie theaters anymore,” Zhu said of his audience, adding that most of them were middle-aged workers and pensioners. “You can watch whatever you want from your mobile phone. It’s very convenient.”
China’s $5 billion-a-year micro-drama industry is booming, according to interviews by Askume with 10 people in the sector as well as four academics and media analysts.
Some experts say short films are becoming a strong competitor in China’s film industry, which is second only to Hollywood and dominated by the state-run China Film Group. And the trend has spread to the United States, a rare example of Chinese culture showing its appeal in the West.
According to analytics firm AppFigures, in the first quarter of 2024, three major China-backed mini-drama apps were downloaded 30 million times on the Apple App Store and Google Play, generating $71 million in international revenue.
Ashley Dudarenok, founder of a marketing consultancy in Hong Kong, said: “Viewers can only have an attention span for so long, so obviously the more time they spend with short videos, the less time they have to watch TV or other long-form programming.”
The leader in this space is Kuaishou, with 60% of the top 50 Chinese micro-series last year coming from the app, according to media analytics consultancy NDATA.
Chen Yiyi, vice president of Kuaishou, said at a media conference in January that 68 of the app’s readings exceeded 300 million last year, including four with more than 1 billion readings.
About 94 million people, more than the population of Germany, watch more than 10 episodes of Kuaishou every day, he said. Askume could not independently confirm the figures.
The first episodes of such apps are typically free, but viewers might have to pay dozens of dollars to watch the full 64-segment mini-drama such as “Grandma’s Moon.”
Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok owned by internet technology company Bytedance, is also popular among fans of mini-dramas.
It joins other major Chinese social media apps such as Instagram’s Xiaohongshu and YouTube rival Bilibili (9626.HK) in announcing plans to build more apps.
In the United States, Reelshort, a micro-drama platform whose parent companies are backed by Chinese technology giants Tencent (0700.HK) and Baidu (9888.HK) , recently landed on Apple’s US App Store for the first time, according to market research firm Sensor Tower.
“China was the first to discover this audience,” said Leila Cao, a Chinese producer based in Los Angeles. “Hollywood hasn’t realized it yet, but all the Chinese companies are already providing content.”
“Obscene and obscene”
The plots of many popular short plays, including “Grandma’s Moon,” revolve around revenge or a Cinderella-like journey from poverty to riches.
At a time when upward mobility is low and youth unemployment is high in China, the story of circumstances at birth being decisive and only changing through miracles resonated with audiences.
The 26-year-old screenwriter, who goes by the pseudonym Camille Rao, said the miniseries often features “people who are lower class one day and upper class the next day — you become so rich that you embarrass the people who were previously humiliated.” You’ve been surpassed.
Rao recently left her low-paying job as a junior producer in the traditional film industry and entered the more dynamic, low-scale world of microseries. She now writes and adapts screenplays for the US market.
“In fact, social mobility is much more difficult now. Many people think it is a social reality,” said Xu Ting, an associate professor of Chinese language and literature at Jiangnan University.
This, he said, has led to a rise in interest in stories about billionaires and wealthy families: “Everyone wants power and money, so it’s normal for these kinds of stories to be popular.”
In contrast, fantasy stories involving werewolves and vampires are particularly popular in the US market, several creators told Askume.
The rise of micro-dramas in China has led to an investigation by the Communist Party.
The regulatory body, the State Administration of Radio and Television, said it carried out a “special rectification” from late 2022 to early 2023, during which 25,300 mini-series were removed from shelves, totaling about 1.4 million, because they contained “obscene, bloody, violent and low-level pornographic content.”
As Chinese leader Xi Jinping continues to promote values such as loyalty to the Communist Party and heterosexual marriage, the state-owned China Women’s Daily complained in April that micro-dramas were “turning unequal and distorted marriage and family relations into a form of inequality,” calling them a “common phenomenon” and “deviating from mainstream social values.”
In June, the government began requiring some creators to register micro-films with the State Radio and Television Administration. The regulator did not respond to Askume questions about the advice.
The key to the commercial success of these films is plot twists that force people to pay while traveling or waiting in line at the grocery store. Episodes often end in amusing ways – such as lovers seeing their partner with another person – and viewers have to pay to watch the next episode to find out what happens.
“The plots of these skits are a bit exaggerated,” said actor Zhu. “The plot is complicated and meaningless, so it attracts people’s attention and more viewers want to watch it.”
Ms. Zhu is a film lover and a great fan of Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca.” Like many of her colleagues in micro-drama, she believes this type of drama has limited artistic value. “I think of it as fast food: long dramas are a kind of delicious food, short dramas are fast food.”
But its loyal viewers disagree. Huang Siyi, a 28-year-old customer service agent, said she likes watching love dramas because “the acting skills are good and both the male and female protagonists look good.”
“It’s easy to become obsessed with microdrama,” he said.
rapid growth
Vertical filming and distribution through social media apps means mini-series can be produced with low overhead costs. According to market research firm iResearch, the budget for such films ranges from US$28,000 (200,000 yuan) to US$280,000 (2 million yuan).
In the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, “Grandma’s Moon” is being shot on a limited budget and deadline. When Askume visited the set in July, filming lasted until 2 p.m. that day. The crew then moved to a new location and resumed filming at 7 a.m.
The show was shot in just six days, and Mr. Zhu, a man with a big smile and very energetic, said he even played table tennis after work to keep up with the young crowd on set.
“Traditional TV series and movies take two to three years, but micro-series only take three months,” said Zhou Yi, a series producer at Chinese gaming giant NetEase (9999.HK). NetEase also produces micro dramas .
As micro-dramas become more and more popular, actors’ salaries are also rising. Zhu said lead actors used to earn US$280 per day, but now lead actors in big productions can earn more than double that amount, while extras earn only US$17 per day.
Mr Zhu is a retired railway worker who began acting in his workplace’s theatre troupe in the 1970s. He now survives on a pension and occasional performances.
Many Chinese miniseries makers have set their sights on Western markets, where China’s cultural exports often struggle. NetEase began producing films for the United States last year and distributing them through an app called Loveshots; films made for export often cannot be released in China.
Miniseries designed for the West are typically created by production and show crews in Los Angeles and filmed on location. English scripts may also revolve around themes such as money, cheating on a partner, and miracles.
The latest mini-drama on Loveshots tells the story of a woman who miraculously regains the ability to walk after years of paralysis and discovers that her husband was unfaithful to her.
