Chinese AI comic dramas go global: overseas active users exceed 150 million, market size expected to surpass US$4 billion

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100 titles launched online in a single day

At an AI comic-drama production company in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, operations head Dai Yizhou is discussing storyboard details with production staff. He explains that with AI-assisted creation, the team can quickly transform traditional literary IP into visual language that suits the aesthetic habits of overseas audiences, which not only lowers production costs but also brings Chinese stories to the international stage in a more lightweight and more tech-forward way.

Company founder Yi Fengping says that from the first half of the year to now, the growth of short dramas going overseas has been especially fast, with 100 titles able to go online every day, mainly exported to Southeast Asia and also extending to European and American markets. By the end of this year, the company's revenue may reach tens of millions of yuan.

Overseas AI comic-drama market expected to exceed US$4 billion

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The market is sending the same signal. Institutions predict that by 2026 the overseas micro-short drama market is expected to reach US$6 billion, of which AI comic dramas are expected to exceed US$4 billion, an increase of about 390% compared with 2025, with Chinese manufacturers holding a market share of more than 90%. Industry insiders say this growth is inseparable from the rapid iteration of domestic large models in areas such as video generation, speech synthesis and multilingual translation. finvideolist3 video-list

Turning to the visuals, Zhang Yuxiang, head of ecosystem cooperation at Yanyu Technology, explains that it starts with a style reference image; the system offers several styles to choose from, and the selected image is then further extended into different character designs, each paired with corresponding prompts to generate specific video storyboards.

The main logic of AI comic dramas is to generate images from text, and then generate video from the images. But AI comic dramas going overseas have very high requirements for character consistency and shot continuity, and often require repeated AI generation to get satisfactory images, so creation platforms must continuously launch new features to save computing costs for companies. In Zhang Yuxiang's view, creation platforms have evolved from generating around a single vertical field in the past into more comprehensive, one-stop AI video creation platforms.

Costs then show up on the books. Data shows that at present the lowest per-minute production cost of a domestic AI comic drama can reach 350 yuan, and the production cycle of one comic drama has been compressed from the original 90 days to about 10 days now; the cost of AI translation and dubbing per title has dropped to 300 to 500 yuan, more than 80% lower than the cost of manual translation and dubbing.

Top ten paid overseas short drama apps

Chinese manufacturers occupy nine seats

At the same time, the channel side is also advancing in parallel. Many companies have begun building overseas video platforms to reach audiences directly. At present, about 10 Chinese companies have established overseas short drama platforms, and more than ten short drama apps going overseas have launched dedicated AI comic-drama channels. Overall, active users of AI comic dramas in overseas markets have exceeded 150 million, and among the top ten paid overseas short drama apps, Chinese manufacturers occupy nine seats. finvideolist3 video-list

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