Micro-dramas reshape China's film economy

Fang Liqi, a producer at Damahou, a micro-drama production company shooting in Shangrao, sees the shift from the company side.

Fang's company moved into the Guangfeng hub at the end of February 2025 after spending about a year shooting in Yingtan, another city in Jiangxi. Before settling in Shangrao, the company had inspected locations across the country and chose Guangfeng for its scenes, policy support and overall production conditions.

The company produced more than 120 micro-dramas in Shangrao in 2025 and plans to produce about 200 this year. It is now also developing AI-generated micro-dramas.

Fang said an AI-produced costume drama may cost 200,000 to 300,000 yuan, while a live-action modern drama may cost 300,000 to 400,000 yuan. An AI version of a modern drama could cost just over 100,000 yuan, he said.

The debate is no longer only whether AI can make a drama. It is what kind of people and jobs will still be needed when parts of the process become cheaper and faster.

Wei Qintao, who is in charge of quality of micro-dramas at Hongguo, told People's Daily that the market had "over-worried or over-interpreted" the impact of AI micro-dramas on live-action productions.

"Live-action dramas are still our basic market," Wei said, adding that he did not believe they had reached the end of their growth or entered decline.

At the same time, Wei noted that mid-level actors, costume and makeup workers, lighting technicians and camera operators face uncertainty as AI changes the sector.

Shen Yang, a professor at Tsinghua University's School of Journalism and Communication, said that in the AI era, human value lies partly in the answers found by asking the right questions.

"What matters most is aesthetics and taste," Shen said.

Overseas market

For production companies, the pressure is also coming from platform policies.

Fang said that before this year, some platforms offered guaranteed payments of 300,000 to 500,000 yuan or more for approved projects. Some companies secured projects and then subcontracted production to others at lower prices. That could bring more projects into the market, but quality was often uneven. Many companies that relied on that model closed earlier this year, he said.

"We make live-action dramas, and we also make AI dramas," Fang said."This market is still worth doing. In the future, content will still be king. As long as the content is good, whatever the form, audiences will pay for it."

For Pang, the next question is not only how to produce faster in China, but where the audience will come from.

His company has launched an overseas app carrying Chinese micro-dramas translated into Southeast Asian languages. The platform has more than 100,000 paying members, he said.

The overseas market is growing quickly. App data analysis firm Sensor Tower said global in-app purchase revenue for short-drama apps approached $700 million in the first quarter of 2025, nearly four times the level of a year earlier. Southeast Asia was one of the fast-growing markets, with downloads in the region rising 61 percent quarter-on-quarter to nearly 87 million in the same period.

For Pang's company, the next plan is to shoot locally in countries such as Indonesia and Thailand, using local actors and stories closer to local audiences.

"At the beginning, we put Chinese micro-dramas overseas after translating them into Southeast Asian languages," Pang said. "But later we still want to go there, shoot locally, use local actors and make stories that local audiences like."

zhaoruinan@chinadaily.com.cn