the scene is from here carrying the dragon king’s childOne of hundreds of short plays appearing on apps like Dramawave and ReelShort. There’s something about it that isn’t quite right. The lighting may be bright and cinematic, but the show has a strange visual texture like something between a movie and a video game cutscene.
that’s because carrying the dragon king’s child These shows are part of a new trend of being made entirely with AI: no actors, camera operators, cinematographers or CGI experts needed.
China’s short drama industry has grown rapidly since its launch in 2018. These ultrashort, melodramatic and often messy shows are designed for smartphone viewing, with episodes often running only a minute or two long: viewers can finish an entire series in 30 minutes to an hour. Movies are made for endless scrolling, packed with emotional conflicts and melodramatic plot twists. The growth of this trend is driven by apps that bombard TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook with cliffhanger-heavy ads designed to entice viewers to purchase subscriptions. In 2024, China’s short drama market reached revenues of approximately $6.9 billion, surpassing the country’s annual box office earnings for the first time.
Since 2022, Chinese short drama companies have expanded aggressively overseas, translating existing hits and producing local series featuring local actors. Globally, short drama apps have approached one billion cumulative downloads. The United States is the largest market outside China, providing about 50% of revenues, according to research firm DataEye.
Now the industry is reshaping itself. Chinese short drama companies – already adept at low-budget, algorithmically optimized entertainment – are adopting generative AI to create content faster and cheaper than ever before. According to DataEye, an average of 470 AI-generated short dramas were released every day in January. Short-drama companies like Kunlun Tech are accelerating AI productions, downsizing film crews, and reorganizing the labor pipeline from the ground up. For some studios, AI has moved from being a supporting tool to becoming the backbone of production.
infinite stories, infinite stories
Short plays are already low budget. But AI has made them dramatically cheaper to mass-produce, helping to speed up the entire process and save money. The production deadline has collapsed. Conceptualization, screenwriting, casting, shooting and editing took three to four months. With AI, the process can now take less than a month, says Tang Tang, vice president of short-drama platform FlexTV. According to Tang, it used to cost about $200,000 to produce a short play in North America, but AI could reduce that cost by 80% to 90%.
After expanding into the U.S. market, Chinese short drama companies largely followed the same playbook they used in China: aggressively buy traffic on TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube; Offer a few free episodes; Then charge viewers to unlock the rest inside the companies’ apps. Decisions about what to produce next are often driven less by creative instincts than by performance data. “We see what themes, storylines and writers resonate with audiences and then adjust quickly,” says Tang.
