A distinctive visual quality marks “Carrying the Dragon King’s Baby,” a short drama found on apps like DramaWave and ReelShort. Despite its glossy, cinematic lighting, the show exhibits an unusual texture, resembling a blend between a movie and a video game cutscene. This unique aesthetic is a direct result of a new production trend: such shows are now made entirely with artificial intelligence, eliminating the need for actors, camera operators, cinematographers, or CGI specialists.
Since its launch in 2018, China’s short drama industry has experienced explosive growth. These ultrashort, often melodramatic and suggestive series are designed for smartphone viewing, with episodes typically lasting only one to two minutes, allowing an entire series to be consumed in 30 minutes to an hour. Crafted for endless scrolling, these films are packed with emotional confrontations and dramatic plot twists. Their popularity is largely driven by apps that saturate TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook with cliffhanger-heavy advertisements, designed to entice viewers into purchasing subscriptions. By 2024, China’s short drama market generated approximately $6.9 billion in revenue, surpassing the nation’s annual box office earnings for the first time.
Since 2022, Chinese short drama companies have aggressively expanded overseas, translating existing hits and producing localized series featuring local actors. Globally, short drama apps have accumulated nearly a billion downloads, with the United States emerging as the largest market outside of China, contributing roughly 50% of the revenue, according to research firm DataEye.
The industry is currently undergoing a significant transformation. Chinese short drama companies, already adept at creating low-budget, algorithmically optimized entertainment, are now widely adopting generative AI to produce content faster and more cost-effectively than ever. DataEye reported that an average of 470 AI-generated short dramas were released daily in January. Companies like Kunlun Tech are scaling up AI productions, reducing film crews, and fundamentally reorganizing their labor pipelines. For some studios, AI has transitioned from a supplementary tool to the core backbone of their production process.
While short dramas are known for their low production costs, AI has made mass production dramatically cheaper and faster, significantly compressing timelines. Conceptualization, scriptwriting, casting, shooting, and editing, which once took three to four months, can now be completed in under a month with AI, according to Tang Tang, vice president at short-drama platform FlexTV. Tang estimates that AI can cut the cost of producing a short drama in North America by 80% to 90%, from an original estimate of $200,000.
In their expansion into the US market, Chinese short drama companies largely mirrored their strategy in China: aggressively acquiring traffic on platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube, offering a handful of free episodes, and then charging viewers to unlock the rest within their proprietary apps. Production decisions are often driven less by creative instinct and more by performance data. As Tang explains, “We look at what themes, plotlines, and writers resonate with audiences, then quickly adjust.”
Source link
