Every platform is moving into micro-dramas, or verticals as they are better known, it seems. The top producers of one time are not asking, “What is your proposal?” They are asking, “Have you got something for verticals (micro-dramas)?” Vertical micro-dramas are still a massive, multi-billion-dollar global industry, but localised markets (like parts of India and early-adopter regions) are seeing a slowdown or “loss of impact” because the content has become oversaturated and repetitive.
Karan Kashyap, founder of Karan Kashyap Films & Trii Play Entertainment, producer, writer and director, writes on his LinkedIn post: “The boom that once hit Mumbai has slowed down. Vertical micro-dramas lost impact because the stories lacked freshness, the locations all looked the same, the costumes felt repetitive, and every show started to look identical. Today, platforms in China, Korea, the US, and the UK have taken vertical storytelling to a completely different level. The kind of stories they’re producing are far more distinct and evolved. In India, especially in the vertical space, it feels like we’re just mass-printing the same formula again and again, and that’s exactly why the audience is dropping.”
Platforms are multiplying. Just a few months ago, Tejkarran Singh Bajaj, now Business Head, Zee 5, then SVP, Head Originals at Jio Studios, wrote on his LinkedIn post in March: “The fastest-growing format in entertainment may soon be AI-powered micro-dramas. Not films. Not big-budget series. Micro-dramas. For over a century, the entertainment industry has worked on the same model: Develop a show. Produce it for months. Market it for weeks. Release it once. One show. One launch. AI changes that model completely. Because AI doesn’t just make content creation cheaper. It makes storytelling continuous. Imagine a world where a new show drops every single day. Not random short videos. Serialized micro-dramas designed for mobile consumption, episodes that run 60–120 seconds, but build addictive daily storytelling.”
From boom to burnout: Why vertical dramas are losing their edge
So you see! AI compresses the entire pipeline. AI is making production cheaper and faster. But open almost any platform and you quickly encounter the same revenge stories, secret billionaires and familiar cliff-hangers. Everyone talks about the hooks. It is becoming an arms race. More content. More platforms. More marketing crores chasing the same audience, because when everyone can produce more cheaply, production itself stops being the advantage.
How do you differentiate when everyone knows the same formula of ‘revenge’ or ‘secret billionaires’, other than by having the deepest pockets? When TV is losing a massive under-30 audience to mobile-first viewers, it is the repetitive, soon-getting-stale storylines that might lose that edge of mobile-first viewership. Just because it costs less to produce verticals, do we have to save money on scripts too? AI is helpful with production cost cuts. Stop using AI for telling your stories.