Chinese 'Cringe' Short Dramas Are Taking America by Storm
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In early November, after the game-drama hybrid 'Oh No! I'm Surrounded by Beauties!' dominated Steam charts, Chinese-style 'domineering CEO' short dramas are now taking America by storm.
Recently, a short drama app called ReelShort climbed to the top three in Apple's overall app rankings, even surpassing the long-dominant TikTok to claim the #1 spot in the entertainment category.
Upon opening the app, you'll immediately recognize a strangely familiar 'cringe aesthetic'—titles like 'The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband,' 'I Kissed My Comatose Husband Awake,' and 'The Werewolf Clan's Daughter' abound. The themes range from wealthy family feuds to werewolf taboos, packing an overdose of 'domineering CEO' tropes.
Yet these seemingly 'tacky' productions have sparked heated discussions among overseas audiences, with many admitting they 'paid to binge-watch entire series.'
With its addictive Western-style 'CEO dramas,' ReelShort has achieved a total of 11 million downloads across Android and iOS since its launch in August 2022, generating over $22 million in net revenue by November 2023.
This demonstrates the remarkable success of exporting China's 'Mary Sue' culture to the U.S., where it has proven highly profitable. The Economist noted, 'ReelShort represents yet another Chinese cultural export conquering America.'
Notably, Crazy Maple Studio (CMS), the overseas subsidiary of ReelShort's parent company Chinese Online, has seen its stock surge over 100% in China's A-share market this month.
How did China's wildly popular short dramas break through language and cultural barriers to successfully monetize Western audiences?
01
"The Love of a Domineering CEO,"
2 minutes for $1
Opening the ReelShort app, users can see short dramas featuring overseas actors. These productions are based on Western themes but incorporate classic Chinese web novel elements like "female lead revenge," "rich family feuds," and "forbidden love"—all staples of the so-called "domineering CEO" trope. The content primarily targets the North American market, with middle-aged women as the core audience.
Most of these short dramas are under 3 minutes, with many lasting just 1-2 minutes. The plots disregard logic, focusing solely on delivering quick thrills—often packing three plot twists into two minutes.
Currently, ReelShort offers dozens of live-action short dramas. A quick glance at the homepage reveals titles like:
Destined Forbidden Love
The Werewolf Family's Daughter
Divorced and Discovered My Wife is a Billionaire
Goodbye, My CEO
The titles and header images of short dramas on ReelShort all feel strangely familiar | ReelShort
The genres covered include wealthy families, revenge, underworld, werewolves, vampires, forbidden love, and contract marriages. Scrolling down reveals more detailed categories such as love after marriage, domineering CEO zone, revenge zone, etc.
Using the popular drama Fated Forbidden Love as an example, the worldview setting of this type of drama is explained: "The orphaned heroine Selene has always lived under someone else's roof, but at the age of eighteen, she unexpectedly becomes the destined lover of two werewolves."
After downloading the app, users can watch a few episodes for free. If they get "hooked" and want to continue watching, they need to pay with in-app coins.
Short drama monetization source—In-app purchases｜ReelShort
The number of coins required for each drama varies, typically costing 60-70 coins per episode. The purchase price for coins is $9.99 per 1000 coins, meaning each episode costs approximately $0.1 to $0.7. Most dramas consist of around 60 episodes, so completing an entire series would cost at least $10 (approximately 70 RMB). For longer series, the cost can range from $25 to $50.
For example, if a short drama requires 72 coins per episode and has 50 episodes, with each episode lasting 1.5 minutes, then the entire 75-minute series would cost about 250 RMB.
There are three main ways to earn coins.
Users can watch advertisements to earn coins, with a maximum of 20 ads per day. Additionally, ReelShort offers daily tasks that reward users with coins upon completion. For instance, logging in consecutively for a week can earn users 165 coins.
However, the total number of episodes available for free viewing is limited, which necessitates users to pay for additional content—this is ReelShort's monetization model.
Of course, ReelShort offers certain discounts to users who purchase coins, with the maximum being a buy-one-get-one-free deal, equivalent to a 50% discount.
For example, the hit series Never Divorce a Secret Billionaire Heiress costs 0.52 euros per episode, with a total of 55 episodes. At a 50% discount, this amounts to approximately 110 RMB.
In fact, this payment model is more expensive than going to the cinema for a movie or subscribing to Netflix for unlimited monthly viewing.
But users have become so addicted to the CP (couple pairing) content that they can't stop watching. Data shows that at its peak, ReelShort's global daily revenue reached approximately $270,000.
Many must be curious about which company and team could so successfully export the popular but unsophisticated short dramas from Chinese video platforms to Western markets, reaping massive profits overseas?
02
With AI Enhancement,
Short Drama Production Boom
The company behind ReelShort is Crazy Maple Studio (Fengye Hudong), headquartered in Sunnyvale, USA. Despite its English name, this is undeniably a Chinese company.
In fact, Crazy Maple Studio (Fengye Hudong) is a division of ChineseAll USA, which is a subsidiary of Beijing COL (Chinese Online) Digital Publishing Group. Founder Joey Jia established Crazy Maple Studio in 2017.
This explains why many of ReelShort's operational methods closely resemble those used domestically.
Initially, in August 2022, ReelShort simply translated domestic short dramas and released them overseas. After several months of operation, the app remained lukewarm, with rankings on both charts hovering outside the top 1000.
As a result, the ReelShort team changed their strategy, utilizing local actors, settings, and scripts, mostly adapted from popular overseas web novel IPs, with each episode kept under 3 minutes. This approach immediately struck a chord with American audiences.
At that time, ReelShort, which initially only had English content, later added versions in Indonesian, Spanish, Thai, German, Portuguese, and other languages.
Meanwhile, ReelShort began using the AI model "Chinese Xiaoyao" to generate or optimize scripts, significantly accelerating content production. From then on, continuously producing targeted, mass-produced content became ReelShort's survival strategy.
In July of this year, two of ReelShort's short dramas became hits: "Fated To My Forbidden Alpha" and "Never Divorce a Secret Billionaire Heiress." ReelShort also frequently appeared at the top of entertainment app charts in various countries, experiencing explosive growth in downloads.
At this point, the team began to increase their marketing efforts, focusing on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube as key platforms for promotion: uploading short drama clips and then directing users to the ReelShort App to watch more. Additionally, the team heavily invested in paid advertising, primarily targeting the Android version, quickly propelling it into the Top 30 of the non-gaming app advertising rankings.
According to data from Sensor Tower, ReelShort added approximately 2 million downloads per month from July to October.
On TikTok, ReelShort has 370,000 followers, with just three pinned videos garnering 62.6 million likes, and the hashtag #shortdrama# has been viewed 722.7 million times.
Furthermore, since early November, the stock price of Col (Chinese Online) has hit a seven-year high, with its market value more than doubling to reach $3 billion.
Nevertheless, according to Cailian Press' survey on overseas social media, ReelShort does seem popular on overall charts, but its discussion rate on overseas social media platforms is not high, and the view counts of its short dramas are relatively low, which has led to suspicions of ReelShort 'buying traffic to top charts'.
In fact, even before Reelshort, Crazy Maple Studio had launched two novel products: Kiss- Read & Write Romance and Chapters: Interactive Stories.
The former was launched in August 2020, focusing on immersive storytelling and providing a pure reading experience, with published novels covering themes such as romance, fantasy, suspense, and LGBT. The latter emphasizes 'sense of immersion' and has consistently ranked at the top of China's book and comic export revenue charts. Currently ranked 14th in the App Store's Books category, it has also become one of the important sources of scripts for the subsequent Reelshort.
As early as 2019, Chapters had already surpassed 15 million registered users. Given this, it further adapted web novels into interactive mini-games, achieving a monthly revenue of $14 million in 2020.
The game format is simple: choose your story from Chapters' series like contract marriage, pirates, alpha wolves, alternate worlds, sci-fi, reality shows, and TV dramas. In most cases, the male and female leads are entangled in dramatic, tumultuous love stories. You decide the plot's direction by making choices (such as falling in love, discovering secrets, or unraveling deep mysteries) to reach different endings. Of course, some options require payment.
This 'game that doesn't feel like a game' has consistently climbed the U.S. bestseller charts since its launch, once approaching the Top 20, with annual revenue reaching hundreds of millions of yuan.
Regarding this, Jia Yi, the founder of Crazy Maple Studio, once mentioned, "They approach game development with a publishing mindset, emphasizing storytelling and pacing over gameplay, thus differentiating themselves from competitors and standing out. Therefore, rather than calling 'Chapters' a game, it's more accurate to describe it as a content platform."
It's evident that Crazy Maple Studio has covered the three major categories in the IP derivative chain: short dramas, web novels, and interactive fiction. Now, it is even beginning to explore the "synergistic effects" between different content apps. For example, in August of this year, it simultaneously launched a work titled "Fatal Temptation Between Two Alphas" across three platforms: Chapters, Kiss, and ReelShort.
03
Short Drama 'Going Global'
A Crowded Track
In fact, China Literature is not the only company venturing into overseas short dramas. This year, companies like NewEra Reading, Changdu Technology, and Jiuzhou Culture are eager to make their mark in the international short drama market.
The popularity of apps like ReelShort has also caught the attention of domestic short drama platforms, prompting them to explore overseas opportunities.
According to media reports, over a dozen Chinese short drama apps flooded overseas markets in September alone. As more players enter the field, competition for traffic has rapidly intensified.
Despite this, investment institutions have pointed out that ReelShort still faces challenges such as difficulties in achieving profitability and a limited content library.
User reviews of ReelShort on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store are mixed.
Many users have expressed that although ReelShort's episodes feature amateur actors, the overall viewing experience is still enjoyable. Additionally, the platform does not enforce mandatory membership purchases, which is commendable.
However, some users have stated, "We would rather pay for a subscription, and ads should be more restricted." Others have complained, "The number of episodes available for free by watching ads is very limited, and the overall pricing for episodes is still quite high."
In short, the business model of short dramas might be best summarized by Elon Musk's comment on TikTok: "Short dramas are making money by exploiting the downward pull of human nature."
After several years of development, domestic short dramas have established a stable user base, and their profit models have gradually become clearer. However, overseas, short dramas remain an emerging industry, and whether they can succeed internationally remains to be seen.