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Tiny screens, big dreams: inside China’s micro-drama industry
STORY: A medieval castle in Zhengzhou, China, looks like a movie set: lights, costumes, directors directing. But this story isn’t for the big screen. It’s not a Netflix-style series, either. It’s aiming for the smallest screens, in the shortest segments. This is one of what have become known as Chinese micro dramas.Small as they are, they’re part of a booming $5 billion industry. And they’re a lifeline for actor Zhu Jian.The 69-year-old retiree plays the powerful patriarch in this tale, called “Grandma’s Moon.”It’s chock-full of melodrama, but each episode is a mere minute long, timed to keep viewers watching, and paying for more.ZHU JIAN: “In the micro drama, every few episodes, there’s a plot twist. At the moment of the twist, it requires you to pay before you can continue watching. Just when you’re fully engaged, right at the most exciting part, when you’re hooked and can’t stop, it stops, and you have to pay! That’s how it operates to survive.” Stories like this stream in apps that prompt viewers to pay for more content. The leader in the space is Kuaishou. One media analytics company estimated Kuaishou accounted for 60% of the top 50 Chinese micro dramas last year.A Kuaishou executive said at a media conference in January that the app featured 68 titles that notched more than 300 million views last year. He said four of their titles were watched over a billion times. Reuters has been unable to independently verify those figures.The analytics firm Appfigures said three major China-backed micro drama apps were downloaded 30 million times across both Apple’s App Store and Google Play in the first quarter of 2024, grossing $71 billion internationally.For actor Zhu Jian, the industry is pretty simple: Low budgets, high profits. “My understanding is that it’s like fast food. While long dramas are like a lavish feast, micro dramas are more like fast food. The required investment is generally in the range of a few hundred thousand, typically between 300,000 to 1 million yuan (42,444 to 141,481 USD).”That’s between $42,000 and $142,000 U.S., mere pennies compared to Hollywood budgets.The boom in micro dramas in China has brought scrutiny from the ruling Communist Party.In 2022 and 2023, the national media regulator removed 25,300 micro dramas – close to 1.4 million episodes – due to what it called their “pornographic, bloody, violent, low-brow and vulgar content.”The regulator didn’t respond to Reuters’ questions for this report. Zhu Jian hopes his story will follow the sort of Cinderella-style rags-to-riches path laid out in the very micro dramas that employ him.He’s a former railway employee who now lives off his pension and occasional acting gigs. But as micro dramas gain in popularity, actors’ salaries have also grown. While extras earn as little as $17 daily, leading roles can pay $280 a day, said Zhu, adding that main actors in big productions can now make more than double that rate.