We're offering a 2-week trial of WrapPRO for $1. If you’ve been wanting to check out our full coverage, now’s the time. Greetings!The microdrama fever has hit Hollywood. These videos — typically movie length but chopped up in several dozen episodes each about 90 seconds long — have ridden on the wave of short-form clip driven by the popularity of TikTok. The fact that it's one of the rare pockets of growth — and a dramatic one at that — in entertainment has a lot of people excited. Holywater, the Ukrainian vertical streaming company behind MyDrama, raised $22 million in a new funding round and is backed by Fox Entertainment. The app also announced a 40-title deal with Dhar Mann, a creator known for his scripted content with 26.7 million YouTube subscribers. TikTok has also gotten into the microdrama game with the launch of PineDrama. An aside: I wonder what Jeffrey Katzenberg, of Quibi infamy, would think? Timing truly is everything. But as Kayla Cobb and Tess Patton write, there's an oft-ignored dark side to microdramas that has driven its growth. The shows turn a profit by operating on shoestring budgets, employing nonunion talent and churning out as much content as possible — as many as 40 a month — with grueling schedules that churn out actors and writers as well. They also employ predatory financial models that pray on their most loyal fans, some of whom are willing to fork over as much as $40 to finish a single show, which I dig into further down. It's a model that has been particularly effective with romance fans, who are known to obsessively consume the latest content. In fact, most of the content follows the same tropes and hew close to the romance and drama genres, largely dictated by algorithms that don't encourage risks. That most of the shows lean in that direction should raise some questions about whether this medium can effectively scale to other genres. For instance, it's hard to imagine a big-budget action or comic book show working within these economic constraints. That hasn't slowed down any of the investment in this medium. But with all of these red flags, are these companies walking into a gold mine or a minefield? Roger Cheng 
Imagine paying more than $40 for what is effectively an average-length film... 
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