PineDrama has exploded in popularity overseas. Who is building ByteDance's "global domineering president"?
Chinese and American screenwriters work on localization, Nigerian teams shoot contract marriage-themed stories, and live-action short dramas have become the new "original works" for AI-generated content. The story supply of PineDrama is far more complex than simply "copying Hongguo".
Five Billionaires，One Little Girl。
Faked Blood，Real Heiress。
Translating these two drama titles directly into Chinese gives "Five Billionaires and One Little Girl" and "Fake Blood Ties, Real Heiress".
Adorable kids doted on by the whole family, real and fake heiresses, these elements instantly bring people back to domestic short drama scenarios.
According to the observation of He Fan Finance, on October 12 and 13, these two dramas ranked first and second respectively on the U.S. regional popular list of PineDrama for two consecutive days. The new drama The Heirless CEO’s Sextuplets rose from 9th to 7th. Similarly, the setting of a "heirless" CEO and sextuplets creates a strong contrast in the title — similar to many AI short dramas on Hongguo, wealth is still closely tied to family, and the formula and selling points of the stories remain very familiar.
Screenshot of PineDrama
PineDrama is a short drama application launched by TikTok that focuses on free viewing. It was tested in the United States and Brazil in December 2025 and officially released in January 2026. This product from ByteDance, which has been online for less than a year, has become one of the fastest-growing applications in the overseas short drama track.
According to data from Sensor Tower, about 9 months after the launch of PineDrama, a short drama app under ByteDance, the cumulative number of downloads exceeded 100 million, with about 7 million daily active users, and it has continuously topped the overall list of local app stores in markets such as Brazil and Indonesia. The report also stated that there are a total of 7 independent short drama apps with cumulative global downloads exceeding 100 million this year, and PineDrama is the only new product among them that has been online for less than a year.
Open the PineDrama page randomly, the interface design is familiar, and the buttons for like, comment, favorite and share are arranged along the right side of the screen. The button below says "Play all". Among the works randomly opened by He Fan Finance, the number of episodes is basically between 30 and 60, and each episode lasts about 1.5 minutes. At the same time, after entering the homepage for many times, many works in the recommended content show the characteristics of AI-generated realistic human images.
Screenshot of PineDrama
Liu Yu, who is engaged in the film and television industry, told He Fan Finance that the rapid production of domestic AI comic dramas is related to the web novels that have been accumulated for many years. "Many of the videos on Hongguo are directly signed with novels," he said. For this kind of production, the existing stories can be used to "directly make storyboards".
A large number of domestic AI realistic short dramas and AI comic dramas are adapted from novels. Then where do the wolf kings, presidents and real and fake heiresses in PineDrama come from? What roles do adaptation, dubbing and local creation play respectively?
The familiar "domineering president" but the story has changed
Compared with Hongguo, which has dozens of segmented lists with different tags, PineDrama's list is more concise.
Its hot list has only two categories, namely "Top Hits" and "Just In". "Top Hits" shows the 100 most popular dramas in the country or region where you are located; "Just In" selects the popular dramas among the works launched in the past seven days. Each drama has a cover, title and genre tag.
He Fan Finance sorted out the complete Top 100 list in the United States on October 12 and found that 50 of them are tagged with "High society", 31 are tagged with "Family bonds", and 15 are tagged with "Werewolf". The tags here are not mutually exclusive, and wealthy families, family affection and werewolves can even appear in the same drama.
Screenshot of PineDrama
For example, the 35th-ranked Contracted to the Alpha: He Made Me the Wolf Pups’ Stepmom puts the contract, wolf cubs and stepmother in the same title. The 46th-ranked REBORN, I CHOOSE THAT OMEGA juxtaposes rebirth with the werewolf-setting Omega. The 72nd-ranked Pregnant by the Alpha, Back with Triplets tells the story of "getting pregnant with Alpha's child and returning with triplets".
The domineering president has changed his identity to become the wolf king, and the plot of returning with children still remains.
After clicking through each work one by one, He Fan Finance observed that most of the works on the list show the characteristics of AI-generated realistic human images. However, different from independent short drama videos such as Hongguo in China, no unified production method label is seen on the PineDrama drama pages checked this time.
Interestingly, after He Fan Finance switched the app language from English to Simplified Chinese, the characters in the original recommendation stream changed from blond and blue-eyed who speak English to black-haired and yellow-skinned who speak Mandarin; the story themes also changed from tens of billionaires, werewolves, and medieval magic to ancient costume-themed cultivation, rebirth and time travel. But the above popular drama list has not changed.
The list description shows that the popularity in this list is jointly calculated by the viewing duration, likes, comments and shares of local TikTok and PineDrama, and is refreshed every hour. The flame numbers of hundreds of millions on the page are the comprehensive popularity, not the independent play volume of PineDrama.
To find out where the stories come from, we still need to find the producers.
There is already a relatively clear story supply path in China. In January 2025, when Le Li, editor-in-chief of Hongguo, was interviewed, he was asked how the self-made center operates. He replied: Some of the scripts are adapted from Tomato Novel IPs, some are submitted by third parties, and the producer selects projects for approval, and then the third-party production company shoots them.
Existing novels provide one path, and external screenwriters can also bring scripts to participate. Among the works that PineDrama has launched, web novel adaptations and dubbed dramas can also be found.
The work page of Sino-US bilingual screenwriting team Lunar Ticks lists this path.
The Alpha King’s Mistake is marked as a web novel adaptation, and the distribution entry includes PineDrama; When Broken Hearts Beat Again is marked as translation and localization, and is also distributed on PineDrama. Remarried at 50, My Husband Turns Out To Be A Billionaire lists English, Portuguese, as well as platforms such as PineDrama, DramaBox, and DreameShort.
Screenshot of Lunar Ticks official website
Judging from the work page, there is no one-to-one correspondence to which language version is launched on each platform for the time being, but it can be seen that the same team will provide content to multiple platforms.
Justin Saucedo, founder and chief screenwriter of the team, has participated in the development of Sino-US film and television projects, and has turned to English vertical short dramas and North American localization of Chinese dramas since 2023. Vivian Wang, the co-founder, is also a bilingual screenwriter.
In an interview published on October 1, Saucedo explained the appeal of short dramas: "You are already a good person, the problem lies with others, and you deserve better." In his view, the fantasy of a billionaire lover also includes the expectation of economic security.
But while both promise "deserve better", the paths for characters to reach a good ending can be different.
The Hongguo short drama After I Married Off to a Foreign Land Instead of My Sister, the Son-in-law Went Crazy and NetShort's AI realistic drama A Werewolf Song of Fire and Frost provide a specific comparison. In the former, the eldest princess Chu Zhaoxue begged to marry General Pei Shi'an, but they became a resentful couple after marriage. After being reborn, she decided to withdraw; in the latter, Naomi has no wolf soul and is forced to marry by her sister, but she is protected by her husband Alpha Julian who can manipulate fire. She then awakens the white wolf soul and fights back against the family that tried to harm her.
Both talk about marriage and counterattack. One lets the heroine re-choose with the memory of her previous life, and the other lets her fight back against her family through the awakening of the wolf soul. With similar themes, different character choices are written out.
Parties supplying dramas to PineDrama have also started to use AI
In addition to adaptation and dubbing, Lunar Ticks also participated in the distribution of a Nigerian live-action short drama — Billion Naira Bride.
In this drama, the heroine Zara's younger brother is in a coma and urgently needs treatment. The hero Ade is the heir of a resort hotel family, but his stepmother freezes his account and limits him to get married within three days to inherit the property. The two sign a six-month fake marriage agreement. He pays her 50 million naira per month and covers her brother's medical expenses.
The familiar formula of contract marriage has new names, currencies and exchange conditions.
This 60-episode short drama is distributed on PineDrama and TikTok. Ifeoma "Oma" Areh, who participated in the production, stated in an signed article on August 17 that the work had about 40 million views in the first week. By October 8, she further disclosed that the drama had exceeded 100 million views within a few weeks.
Local film and television workers are entering a rapidly expanding market. Sensor Tower's 2026 short drama report estimates that the global short drama app downloads in the first quarter exceeded 850 million times, a year-on-year increase of 140%.
However, with film and television production experience, people still need to re-learn how to fit stories into the vertical screen of mobile phones.
On January 27, creative strategist Areh and media entrepreneur Elijah Affi launched Digital Creator Africa Academy, referred to as DCAA, in Lagos, Nigeria. This institution targets experienced film and television workers, and offers courses in screenwriting, directing, production, editing, AI production and performance to help students switch to vertical micro short dramas.
Director Scott Di Lalla recalled in a public post that he was invited by Areh to teach vertical directing courses online, and some students later participated in the production of Billion Naira Bride. He named the drama's director Prosper Edesiri Arhawho and screenwriter Blessing Azugama in the post.
Azugama later reviewed that the difficulty of writing is how to keep the audience watching until the next episode.
"You can't give the highest climax in episode 3 and expect the audience to keep watching until episode 30," Azugama said when reviewing this work. She needs to make each episode increase the risk, deepen the problem, or reveal new information. Areh requires that the hook be established in the first three seconds, and the suspense at the end of the episode should fall on "a face, not a line of dialogue".
According to Areh's disclosure, the client of Billion Naira Bride is Hong Kong Unisun Group. This company is engaged in short drama investment, production and copyright authorization, and provides content for platforms. Azugama's work post also lists Unisun's copyright information, as well as two distribution entries: PineDrama and TikTok.
This is a path where local teams write scripts and shoot, and then supply dramas to the platform.
The same group of drama suppliers have begun to try another production method.
On October 8, in the same article that disclosed the playback performance, Areh wrote that DCAA is developing five AI micro short dramas, with themes including African mythology, fantasy and science fiction, and the appearance settings of the heroines will reflect the characteristics of different regions in Africa. That is to say, this team that has supplied live-action dramas to PineDrama has begun to try to use AI to produce another batch of stories. However, these five works are still in the development stage, and the distribution arrangement on PineDrama has not been announced yet.
There is also a more direct "undertaking" — the filmed live-action short dramas are becoming the new "original works" for AI short dramas.
Domestic producer Xue Bao, who used to be a web novel author, live-action short drama screenwriter and director, now leads the studio to produce AI realistic dramas. In an interview with Short Drama Dark Horse published on February 24, she introduced that the script of Don't Provoke the Fat Concubine, She is Equipped with Five Cores had been shot in a modern live-action version before. She and the client decided to change it to an ancient costume theme, advance the appearance of