Reelarc founder Guy Chachkes sat down with actor and coach DaJuan Johnson for Episode 618 of the Think Bigger Actors Podcast. The question on the table: verticals, also called micro dramas, are growing faster than almost anything else in the industry. So are actors already behind?
Guy has spent the last three years producing micro dramas alongside running Reelarc, and the conversation goes well past "verticals are the next big thing." Here is what he covered, with the numbers and examples he brought to the show. Watch the full episode above, or read on.
Key takeaways
- Micro dramas are on track to be a $26 billion business worldwide by 2030, and US revenue is already approaching $2 billion.
- The core audience is not Gen Z. It is women between 30 and 60, and they are loyal to the actors and the worlds they watch.
- Every episode needs a hook, an escalation, and a cliffhanger. You cannot cut a feature film into two-minute pieces and call it a vertical.
- Working actors on verticals earn anywhere from $500 to $6,000 a day, depending on name and following.
- The big apps do not take submissions. The way in is a pilot: eight episodes, up to the paywall, that you can package and pitch.
- Human-made shows are holding up better than AI-generated ones, but non-union actors need to read their contracts.
How Guy got into verticals
Reelarc has produced demo reel scenes for actors for twelve years. About three years ago Guy noticed a format coming out of China: two-minute episodes, shot vertically for phones, released in runs of 60 to 120. He saw a company already set up with studios, actors, and crew, and a format that could be produced at scale.
The first attempt was an app. That lasted until it became clear that the platforms winning the space, ReelShort and DramaBox among them, run on data science departments as much as on content. Reelarc moved to the production side instead and has been making shows since 2023.
Guy started posting about micro dramas about six months ago, around the time SAG-AFTRA began talking about a micro drama contract. His first video did 50,000 views. The next did 100,000, then 300,000. His advice to actors trying to build a following: "Just talk about something that you like."
Where the money is
Guy put the global micro drama market at $26 billion by 2030, a number he first gave DaJuan two years ago when almost nobody believed it, with the US alone approaching $2 billion in revenue. Mobile viewing on micro drama apps, he said, has already passed Netflix's mobile viewership. His prediction: every major streamer will launch its own vertical format soon.
The rest of the industry is catching up. Guy described pitching a micro drama for a comedian to one of the biggest agents at CAA, who asked him what a micro drama was. A week before the recording, she emailed him back asking to talk about it. Fox, Disney, Paramount, and TikTok are all building their own lanes. Keke Palmer, Taye Diggs, and James Franco have each released one.
Who is actually watching
DaJuan assumed the audience was Gen Z. It isn't. Guy said the core viewer is a woman between 30 and 60, closer to 40 to 50, and the community around these shows is loyal to the actors and the worlds in a way he compared to Comic-Con. As DaJuan pointed out, that is the demographic with money to spend. The audience is slowly getting younger and more male, but physical productions still play to that core.
The addiction arc: hook, escalation, cliffhanger
This is the part of the episode most useful to anyone writing or producing. Guy separates two things in a micro drama: the story arc, where the whole thing starts and ends, and what he calls the addiction arc. Every episode needs a hook, an escalation, and a cliffhanger. You cannot take a 120-page script, cut it into two-minute chunks, and expect it to work.
His example: a veteran producer came to him with a feature that had Sandra Bullock attached in the 1990s and asked whether it could become a vertical. Guy adapted it into a 12-episode micro drama, rebuilding each episode around the addiction arc.
Then there is the paywall moment. Most apps give away roughly the first eight episodes and charge from there, so everything up to episode eight has to be airtight. On set, Guy said, you will hear the crew say "this is the paywall moment" when they get to it.
If you want to study the form, he suggested reality TV. Shows like Below Deck are the clearest examples of hook, escalation, and cliffhanger anywhere on television. Then layer in what makes it a social media format: music stings, sound effects, subtitles. As Guy put it, "engage at all costs."
What the acting is, and isn't
The acting in verticals is big, and Guy did not sugarcoat it. The format grew up serving a Chinese audience watching English-language shows, so heightened emotion became the house style, and the shows are built to hold a viewer who is scrolling. "It's purposeful," he said. "I give in to the form, because that's what engages."
He pointed to a vertical actress he knows who is on her 30th title, always playing the villain, and having a great time. His advice: treat it as another tool, have fun, get paid, and don't wait for it to be Oscar material.
In practice that means first-take acting. Productions shoot 70 to 100 episodes in about seven days with several cameras running, so there is no time to sit with the method. DaJuan compared it to his soap opera days, shooting 60 pages a day.
AI, non-union sets, and the risk nobody calculated
DaJuan brought up a recent guest on the show, an actress with more than 30 verticals to her name, who discovered one of them had been re-released with her replaced by an AI-generated performer. There was no AI language in her contract. Guy's take: many of the early non-union actors working with Chinese companies never calculated that risk, and it is not their fault. He has seen a Reelarc client's face turn up in an AI show too.
His read on where AI is going: it will have its own lane, but it is not replacing human-made shows. China is producing around 50,000 AI micro dramas a month, and audiences are choosing to pay for real people. A large Western app he works with found that viewers drop off AI shows much faster than human ones. "Human-made micro dramas are going to become more valuable when anyone can make an AI show."
On unions, Guy expects protections to come, the way they came to Hollywood in the 1920s. He was also candid that SAG-AFTRA moves slowly, and that a $300,000 show that has to clear a union before it can shoot loses the momentum the format depends on. The whole idea is write for a month, shoot for a week, post for a month, and be on the air.
What actors get paid
By Guy's numbers, day rates on verticals run from about $500 to $6,000 depending on your name and your following. Recognizable vertical stars get flown around the world to shoot. There are now talent agencies whose entire business is placing actors in micro dramas, and actors with a following can earn on top of their rate through affiliate links and revenue share.
How to get a micro drama made
The apps do not accept submissions. They are what Guy calls a closed loop: a marketing team and data scientists decide what will sell, the company puts $200,000 to $300,000 behind it, and it goes on the platform. Outside material has no data behind it, so it rarely gets in.
The ways in, as Guy laid them out:
- Make the pilot. Eight episodes, up to the paywall. A scrappy team can do it for $10,000 to $50,000. Package it, then raise money on it, post it on social, or pitch a platform to co-produce the rest. Reelarc has six shows in this stage right now.
- Produce from their slate. The platforms know what they plan to shoot each season. An investor or production company can produce one of those titles and let the platform put marketing money behind it.
- Partner with a production company. If you have your own story, a producer like Issa Rae's Hoorae Media is a more realistic door than the distribution apps themselves.
- Put it on your own social. A pilot you own can build an audience, feed your socials, or become IP that leads somewhere else. Guy's own Instagram went from 600 followers to a real following in six months on this topic alone.
Micro dramas as marketing
One idea DaJuan admitted sold him: the format works for businesses, not only for entertainment. Guy described a series Reelarc produced for child psychologist Bryan Post, whose videos usually reach 10,000 to 15,000 views. The narrative episodes took him to 60,000 to 100,000. "People just continue watching, because we love to watch stories." For an actor, the same approach can tell the story of your own career.
Listen to the full episode
Thank you to DaJuan Johnson for having Guy back on the show. Watch the full conversation above or on YouTube, and find more episodes at the Think Bigger Actors Podcast.
If you want the production side of this in more detail, read How Films and Vertical Series Are Scheduled Before You Get Cast.