China's next cultural export could be short, TikTok-style soap operas, with episodes lasting around two minutes.
In recent years, these fingertip-friendly vertical mini-series have become extremely popular in the Dragon: they often include almost a hundred episodes, but since each lasts only a minute or two, overall they last no longer than a traditional film.
The apps available that offer this product - such as FlexTv, DramaBox, Youku - do not aim for expensive, polished productions, but choose simple scripts, shoot an entire series in two weeks, market it heavily online and move on to the next project if it doesn't work.
According to an article in the MIT Technology Review, "the most successful domestic productions earn tens of millions of dollars in just a few days, and the entire short film market in China was worth over $5 billion in 2023."
Now producers want to break into the US with these short productions, perfect for cell phones, to watch on the way to the office or on your lunch break.
FlexTV, for example, is a Chinese app that offers series shot specifically for mobile phone screens, divided into around 90 two-minute episodes and optimized for today's extremely short attention span.
“Soap operas for the TikTok era,” as they called them.
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