DramaBox Pivots to Family: What Changes on a 9:16 Screen

For years, DramaBox has ruled the micro-drama space with outrageous billionaire romances and supernatural love stories, but now, the Singapore-based platform is rewriting its script.

In an effort to outgrow its “guilty pleasure” image, DramaBox is expanding beyond werewolves and wealth to embrace something broader and surprisingly wholesome. The app’s next act includes family stories, kids’ animation, and choose-your-own-adventure dramas, all still built for the vertical screen: fast beats, close-up emotion, and music cues that land instantly.

Richard Zhou, DramaBox’s Head of Global Content, said the goal is simple but ambitious: “to become the most popular micro-drama platform for American users and partners.” That means rethinking not just what people watch, but who they can watch it with.

The company’s U.S. strategy leans on collaboration and innovation. It’s opening a New York office and was recently selected for the Disney Accelerator, joining the same program that supported Epic Games and ElevenLabs. By working with Hollywood creators, like viral storyteller Dhar Mann, whom DramaBox execs recently met, the platform hopes to merge social media sensibility with studio-level craft.

DramaBox, part of Singapore’s StoryMatrix, has already proven the model works. According to Sensor Tower, the app has pulled in $450 million in global in-app revenue, trailing only slightly behind rival ReelShort. With its new direction, DramaBox isn’t just chasing numbers; it’s chasing longevity.

In a time when Gen Z prefers YouTube over television and Hollywood struggles to recover from labour strikes and shrinking budgets, micro-dramas offer a new kind of storytelling economy. They’re cheap to produce (around $100,000–$300,000 per movie) and designed for the device everyone already holds—the smartphone. As Shicong Zhu, DramaBox’s LA-based head of studio, put it: “We don’t want to replace Hollywood; we want to empower it.”

That might be the real story here: a vertical screen once known for guilty pleasures becoming a shared space for families, creators, and filmmakers to rediscover what storytelling looks like in the palm of your hand.

Source: Business Insider

Article Written by Blessing Azugama

#BlessingAzugama