"You've Been Replaced by AI": Short Drama Creators in 2026

By Xia Guang She | Author: Wuta | Editor: Li Xiaotian

In June of this year, Mandy moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Her rent rose from $1,800 to $2,600 a month, and her identity also changed: she became an independent short-drama director.

The reason for moving was simple: there were too few opportunities in Atlanta.

At the end of 2023, a classmate from film school invited her to start a business together, working as a producer on a project basis in collaboration with the other person's production company. At that time, short dramas were still very new in the United States; producers were almost all Asian, and only a small number of crew members were American. At that time, both her work and life were in a state of "just right."

"I studied in Atlanta. This is a film and television industry base that has emerged in North America in recent years, attracting a large number of production crews to come and shoot, so I stayed after graduation. However, for people doing creative work, there actually aren't many opportunities here."

Starting in May and June of this year, job opportunities in the industry suddenly shrank. Mandy's most direct impression was this: in early May, the clients, platforms, and short-drama companies she had been in contact with were still hiring and expanding; around June, almost all of these actions were halted.

According to the DataEye Research Institute, Jiuzhou Culture's AI dramas and comic dramas already account for 95% of the company's total production capacity, producing and broadcasting 1,399 new dramas in March 2026 alone; Kunlun Wanwei Tiangong AI's AI Native business exceeded $800 million in ARR in Q2 2026, of which the AI short-drama platform accounted for more than $700 million, and more than 80% of new content on its short-drama platform DramaWave is generated by AI.

Cecilia, head of Crazy Stone Film and Television in the United States, mentioned that after Q2 2026, overseas live-action short-drama projects have shrunk by at least 30% to 50% year on year.

Short-drama actress Blake Manning told Business Insider that she received an invitation to shoot a short drama in April, but was subsequently notified, "You have been replaced by AI." Another short-drama star, Rebecca Berg, perceived an even greater change: previously she could receive twenty or thirty audition calls a week, but after early June that number dropped to single digits.

Considering cost and efficiency, this shift is almost inevitable.

Wang Wenjin, founder of Haoli Media, once revealed that in 2023 her first short drama cost $110,000 to produce. By January 2025, the shooting cost was close to $200,000.

Mandy told us that in recent years, the wages of overseas short-drama crew members have not risen significantly; the core cost increase lies in actors' salaries. This year, the highest salary she has seen for an actor was $3,000 per day, far exceeding the industry standard of $1,000 per day; another producer, Linda, told us that an actress who earned $800 per day in 2023 saw her value rise to $1,500 by mid-2025.

Actress Vanessa von Schwarz, who became famous for appearing in short dramas

In North America, actors' working hours are also subject to certain protections. Although some projects are not affiliated with unions, adult actors basically follow the rules of "no more than 12 hours a day, and an interval of more than 12 hours from wrapping on one day to starting work the next day." Under these rules, the longest short drama Mandy shot took 13 days, and the shortest took 6 days.

Multiple practitioners revealed that the shooting cost of an overseas live-action short drama is about $150,000, but the cost of an AI short drama may be only one-tenth of that figure.

In the three months since coming to Los Angeles, Mandy has taken on two projects. The daily rate is slightly higher than before, but the number of projects is only half of what it used to be, and she has to pay 23% to 30% in taxes herself. "But some work expenses can be deducted from taxes, such as gas money for driving to the set."

Although there are not many projects, Mandy does not regret coming to Los Angeles. "Now may just be a turning point. But if I had stayed in Atlanta, the work I got would only be even less."

Actually, that's not the case either.

In July and August of this year, the industry experienced an earthquake, caused by a change in TikTok's short-drama revenue-sharing coefficient.

Data shows that in August, TikTok's domestic drama monthly revenue share exceeded $24 million, domestic AI dramas grew 55%, and revenue sharing hit a new high. But the fact is that many practitioners found their take-home amounts plummeting, posted their bills in various groups and on social platforms, and began a series of discussions about "direct-line, collateral-line, and outside-line" status.

Deng Chengye, CEO of Qiyun Workshop, an AI overseas short-drama production company, gave a range: "At the beginning it was about $30 per 10,000 views, and then it suddenly dropped to a few dollars per 10,000 views. The cliff-like drop in the coefficient affected many of the first wave of companies doing AI short dramas overseas."

Another entrepreneur was even more helpless about this. "The lies woven by TikTok have made everyone greatly question this industry."

Not only that, competition within the track is also intensifying.

This year, when Deng Chengye participated in a project bid on a certain platform, he faced as many as six competitors. This DND (Dungeons & Dragons) project not only required the entire bid presentation to be in English — the director needed to explain his understanding of the plot, art style, and subsequent production content, and on that basis fully communicate with other production teams and the platform's own director team; it also required producing a demo within three days.

Who has occupied the new ecological niche?

The largest group in the industry is still the blind followers. After communicating with several practitioners, this is the conclusion everyone reached unanimously.

But the fact is that blind followers crowd inside the threshold, while serious players build their own roads outside it. The biggest misunderstanding in this industry is treating "easy to enter" as "easy to make money."

The first force is Chinese teams, and they are growing new industrial clusters domestically. Just as live-action short dramas reshaped the entertainment map, in addition to Zhengzhou, Ningbo, and Xi'an, which rose during the short-drama era, practitioners say AI short dramas have also given rise to a new "Four Little Dragons": Hangzhou, Chongqing, Nanchang, and Wuhan. Scriptwriting may lean more toward Hangzhou and Chongqing, while production may lean more toward Zhengzhou, Nanchang, Chongqing, and Wuhan. "Wuhan especially, because the Wuhan Animation Institute naturally provides local talent."

Beyond Chinese teams, two other forces occupy the overseas ecological niches: mature transformation teams born in overseas local markets, and entrepreneurs who grew up in the AI-native era. "Right now, apart from Chinese teams, the ones doing AI short dramas best are the Americans," Deng Chengye told Xia Guang She.

Among the more mature transformation teams, the digital publishing platform Inkitt is quite representative. The company was founded in 2013 in Berlin, Germany, and currently has offices in Berlin and San Francisco. Its short-drama streaming app CandyJar claims that AI can reduce production costs by 99%; its sister company Ironblood specializes in action-oriented AI short dramas aimed at male audiences, inviting live actors to participate in micro-expression training, completing a work in three to four weeks at a cost of less than $60,000.

According to the DataEye Research Institute's report for the first half of 2026, CandyJarTV entered the TOP 20 in overseas micro-short-drama in-app purchase revenue, one of four overseas local apps on the list, alongside Ukraine's My Drama, South Korea's Vigloo, and Israel's Shortical.

Entrepreneurs who grew up in the AI-native era are represented by Cecilia Shen, a former Google engineer who founded Utopai Studios, "the world's largest independent AI-native film and television studio," at just 25. Utopai Studios' official website prominently states: Next-generation studio. Human-directed. AI-powered.

Screenshot of the Utopai Studios official website

Utopai Studios takes a high-profile, high-investment approach: appearing on the opening main stage of the Cannes MIPCOM television festival and collaborating with Oscar-nominated Antonio Banderas. According to Forbes, the company's valuation has reached $1 billion—the highest valuation to date for a purely artificial intelligence film and television studio in independent reporting.

This is enough to show that with overseas local forces and international giants all entering the fray, the global short-drama market is bidding farewell to the situation where Chinese companies dominated alone and entering a "Warring States era" of contending rivals.

One of the earliest surviving werewolf stories appears in The Epic of Gilgamesh: the goddess Ishtar turns a shepherd into a wolf. In ancient Greece, Herodotus also recounted in Histories the legend that the Neuri turn into wolves every year, though he himself did not believe it. Entering the early modern period, from the late fifteenth century to the seventeenth century, werewolf legends in parts of Europe became intertwined with witchcraft trials; some people were tried on charges of conspiring with the devil and transforming into wolves, and some were executed.

Initially, film and television works often tied the werewolf theme to thrillers, but in 2008 the fantasy film Twilight grossed $393 million worldwide and went on to release four more films over the following four years, reaping $3.3 billion in box office. Its reshaping and re-enchantment of werewolves began to make screen creators frequently tie werewolves to romantic love, making it one of the important themes.

Poster for the film Twilight

While naturally attracting attention, this kind of fantasy content is also the hardest to produce.

Deng Chengye told Xia Guang She that earlier in the year, when they were producing a certain scene for a werewolf-themed short drama, they ran more than 20 generation attempts.

In October, the head of an AI short-drama production company publicly did the math: for 720p video, the model charges 1.5–1.6 yuan per second, which is 90 yuan per minute. At the normal rate of three generation attempts per shot, the computing cost per minute is nearly 300 yuan. That is to say, earlier in the year, producing a werewolf-themed AI overseas short drama would certainly have cost even more.

Chinese Online also disclosed at its Beijing offline roadshow and online conference call held on June 3 that "among all domestic Token consumption shares, AI short dramas and video generation rank first, accounting for as much as 55%." Chinese Online also said that the high share of Token consumption by AI short dramas and video generation is because, after the emergence of AI simulated-live-action short dramas, Token consumption further increased compared with forms such as comic dramas, and the production process requires continuous shot generation attempts to screen out the most ideal results, thus continuously generating consumption.

In addition, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology's "Token Economy Development Research Report (2026)," released on September 30, also used data consistent with Chinese Online, stating that AI short dramas account for 55% of the entire industry's token consumption share.

"Although technological advances and the accumulation of materials have improved accuracy, even now some light sources, especially natural-light scenes, are still hard to handle," Deng Chengye admitted frankly.

From a cultural-background perspective, vampires, the sibling theme to werewolves, also carry the genes to become a breakout hit. But in the boom of the past year, no true breakout hit in that theme has appeared.

In terms of views and payments, Latin America has been the best-performing region in the past year.

Specifically, three structural forces are driving the vigorous development of Latin America's short-drama market:

First, Latin America is one of the regions with the highest smartphone penetration in the world: GSMA predicts that smartphone penetration in Latin America is already close to 80%, while fixed broadband remains limited in many areas, and phones are the primary device for going online and watching content, making the region naturally suited to the popularity of a content format like short dramas.

Second, ever since television became widespread in Latin America in the 1950s, TV series have become the most familiar companion for local audiences. They have shaped regional identity, weaving love, conflict, and social issues into everyday viewing habits. Unlike Western soap operas, which advance slowly over many years, Latin American TV series usually complete a full, dramatic storyline within just over a hundred episodes, complete with forbidden love, hidden identities, and dramatic reconciliations—none of it missing. They are not just entertainment; they are a shared language.

The flourishing of TV dramas in Latin America is closely tied to Familismo (familism), which prevails in Latin American culture. As a British scholar of cultural studies and media studies said in the book Family Television, television was originally a family ritual medium at the center of the living room, watched together by the whole family; its premise for existence was the nuclear family as a unified unit and fixed shared family time.

Avenida Brasil, Brazil's national hit drama that debuted in 2012

In Latin America, kinship networks are tight and the overall degree of social atomization is lower than in Europe and North America, so the disintegration of family media has followed a different rhythm. According to a 2023 study by the Latin American Media Research Institute, 83% of surveyed viewers consider TV series "part of family life," and 65% discuss plot twists at the dinner table or during breaks at work. Latin American audiences' extreme pursuit of strong conflict and dramatic tension has, in the mobile internet era, also migrated to a more compact content format: short dramas.

Third, Latin America's middle class is steadily growing, driving demand for short-video streaming. They have both disposable income and smartphones, making them the demographic base for the short-drama "pay-to-unlock" model. The price to unlock each episode of a vertical short drama is about $0.30 to $0.50, which is not a heavy burden for middle-class families in Brazil and Mexico.

It is worth noting that the audience for overseas short dramas is not limited to the so-called lower-tier market. In April 2026, consumer research conducted by research firm Omdia in the United States, Brazil, Germany, and South Korea showed that in Brazil, Germany, and South Korea, iPhone users' willingness to pay for micro-drama content was significantly higher than that of Android phone users.

69% of iPhone users and 68% of Android users said they watch short dramas through subscriptions, one-time purchases, or in-app payments; in some markets, iPhone users are more likely to pay for micro-dramas, which breaks the industry's stereotypes about the audience.

The potential of Latin America's short-drama market has also attracted a stream of Chinese short-drama platforms expanding overseas.

PineDrama, incubated by TikTok's business, launched in the United States, Latin America, Indonesia, and other places at the end of 2025, offering short dramas to users for free, with content mainly consisting of "overseas local productions."

Local productions are made by overseas teams in local languages and require no translation; the other route is "translated dramas," meaning Chinese short dramas are translated and exported. The two also diverge in direction: local productions mostly adopt a paid viewing model in Europe and North America, while translated dramas flow in large numbers to Southeast Asia.

On October 14, estimates released by overseas mobile data research firm Sensor Tower showed that PineDrama's downloads had exceeded 100 million, with about 7 million daily active users, less than a year after launch.

In addition to PineDrama, other leading platforms are also stepping up their efforts in Latin America: ReelShort co-produced Spanish-language originals with Colombia's Caracol TV and launched locally produced series in Argentina; DramaBox also started local production in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, though initially mainly adapting existing scripts.

Beyond Chinese overseas platforms, Latin American traditional media groups also concentrated on launching vertical-screen content platforms in 2025 and 2026: for example, GloboPop launched by Brazil's Globo, ViX MicrO launched by TelevisaUnivision, the world's largest Spanish-language media company, and MegaShorts under Chile's television station Mega.

In addition, emerging short-drama startup teams in the Latin American cultural region are also a growing force: platforms such as Shorta, Latin America's first original vertical-screen series platform, Idilio TV, founded in 2025 and led by a16z Speedrun, and TeleReels, tailored specifically for Hispanic and Latino audiences, are emerging one after another.

In this wave, Chinese entrepreneurs are also important participants. TeleReels is a typical short-drama team built by a Chinese entrepreneurial team: CEO Leky Lin was born in China, grew up in Argentina, and was educated in the United States; she is an award-winning producer with more than ten years of experience in international film and television and media management. COO Moon Zhang is a veteran screenwriter responsible for content IP acquisition and planning; CTO Samuel Zhang has served as an engineering lead at consumer platform companies such as Airbnb and Microsoft.

Conclusion

On the other side of the AI boom, Mandy's friends are trying to "escape" the industry: some have gone into advertising, and some have started making independent films.

Recently, there have indeed been some success stories for independent films in North America. For example, the true-crime documentary "You Can See Everything," produced in secret over three years, uses 174 minutes to tell the story of the 34 days before Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the famous Silicon Valley fraud case Theranos, went to prison, as well as her life after incarceration. The film received rave reviews after its "mystery surprise screening" at the Telluride Film Festival, and it is said that Holmes and her husband personally invited the American independent film company A24 to make it.

As for the future, Mandy says she wants to do well what can be done right now. "The industry is changing too fast. In two years, we've watched short dramas rise, feast their guests, and collapse. Everyone in the industry is still exploring, and there is no clear conclusion."

English text is being prepared.