Overseas Red Fruit, Harvesting the Global Market?

In the past few years, while filming short dramas in Los Angeles, producer Fancy has spent quite a lot of time appeasing the crew.

Back then, she and her peers would often rent a luxury mansion in Beverly Hills and finish filming a short drama in 5 to 8 days. Many people in the crew had participated in the production of Hollywood films and TV series, and were accustomed to fine division of labor and repeated polishing. With the shooting cycle compressed to one week, the footage on the monitor looked rather rough in their eyes, and many found it unacceptable that such works came from their own hands. Fancy often had to communicate repeatedly before the other party would compromise.

Now all these communications are unnecessary. In Fancy's team, apart from the investors and screenwriters based in the United States, all other production links have been moved back to China. There is no need for a film set in Los Angeles, and the footage is generated by AI.

She recalls that 2024 and 2025 were the busiest periods for live-action short drama filming in Los Angeles, with at least 30 to 40 crews starting work at the same time every month. Today, it is quite good if 8 dramas can start filming in a month. Multiple sources told *Dingjiao One* that domestic short drama companies including GoodShort, Jiu Zhou, Kunlun Wanwei, and Maiya have successively reduced their local production teams in the United States, retaining only a small number of management personnel.

However, the deserted film sets do not mean that the overseas short drama business is in recession.

According to Sensor Tower data, in the first quarter of 2026, the global number of short drama app downloads exceeded 850 million, a year-on-year increase of 140%; in the same period, in-app purchase revenue was about 750 million US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 20%. Users are still pouring in, but the growth rate of paid revenue is far behind the growth rate of downloads.

AI has reduced the cost of a single drama to a fraction of the previous level, and also given confidence to another model: no longer charging viewers, using massive free content to attract traffic, and making profits through advertising. The fastest runner in this field is ByteDance.

At the end of 2025, ByteDance began testing the free short drama app PineDrama overseas, which was officially launched in January this year. According to Sensor Tower, as of October 12, the cumulative number of downloads of PineDrama has exceeded 100 million, with about 7 million daily active users. Among the 7 independent short drama apps with cumulative global downloads exceeding 100 million, it is the only product that has been launched for less than a year.

Chinese audiences are no strangers to this set of tactics. In 2023, ByteDance launched Hongguo Short Drama, which rewrote the competition rules of China's domestic short drama industry with the model of free viewing and advertising monetization. QuestMobile data shows that as of July 2026, Hongguo's daily active users reached 168 million, exceeding the sum of the four long-video platforms Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku and Mango TV.

Hongguo has also changed the survival rules for production companies. At the beginning of its launch, Hongguo attracted contracted production companies to enter the market with a guaranteed minimum fee of 200,000 to 350,000 RMB per drama. The platform controlled the scripts and copyrights, and the producers would share the revenue proportionally after finishing the drama. As the platform grew larger, production companies began to compete around popularity value, completion rate and revenue sharing rules, and gradually became a part of the platform's content supply chain. After the Spring Festival in 2026, Hongguo adjusted the guarantee mechanism, canceled the guarantee for live-action short dramas of some contracted production companies, and many companies' live-action projects were suspended, turning to lower-cost AI comic dramas.

Now, this model has been brought overseas. Will the scripts of Hongguo be staged again overseas?

01. The film sets are deserted, and the platforms are getting stronger

Since June this year, Fancy has successively received messages from some short drama directors: "I'm available now, do you have any projects for me?"

Six months ago, the situation was the opposite. At that time, if you wanted to book a director, you had to schedule two or three months in advance; the daily salary of actors was 1,000 US dollars, and it might rise to 1,200 to 1,500 US dollars the next month.

Overseas short dramas emerged around 2022, and the competition was the most fierce in 2024 and 2025. Leo, a Hollywood producer engaged in traditional film and television development, experienced this boom. He said that in the hottest years, vertical short dramas almost "supported most young people in Hollywood", many of whom were Chinese international students. After graduating from film schools and failing to enter traditional large film and television companies, they were recruited by short drama companies. Several interns that Leo once supervised later became heads of content production at leading short drama platforms, earning more than he did.

Source / PineDrama APP

But the turning point came quickly.

On March 28, NetShort, a short drama platform under Maiya Media, launched an AI drama *One Move God Mode*. The 46-episode drama is set against the background of Greek mythology, telling the story of the son of Poseidon, the sea god, who counterattacks from a despised farmer to become a god. This drama quickly became a hit, topped the overseas AI drama list in April, and successively launched multiple language versions. According to media reports, the global revenue of this drama exceeded 8 million US dollars.

It also made NetShort, the short drama application under Maiya, popular. In April, the monthly download volume of NetShort rose to the second place among overseas short drama apps. According to Sensor Tower, its single-day download volume once reached 1 million times, and the single-day revenue reached 750,000 US dollars.

NetShort was not originally a strong player in this market. Fancy said that after this drama became a hit, almost all leading platforms panicked. At that time, she also talked with the management of a leading short drama platform, who said that they had long been laying out AI dramas, "but it was only a layout all the time". It was not until a real AI short drama became a hit that all parties became anxious and began to invest fully, for fear that they would not get a share of the pie if they were late.

The choices of the platforms were quickly transmitted to the film sets.

After AI dramas exploded in April, by June, local live-action shooting in the United States had shrunk significantly. According to Fancy's observation, only a few companies including ReelShort under Maple Interactive and DramaBox under Dianzhong Technology are still insisting on live-action shooting in the United States; peers who can still receive short drama projects are "probably less than 10% of before".

Fancy also switched to making AI short dramas. She only kept partners in the United States, mainly investors and localized screenwriters, while directors and generators are all based in China. For one thing, there is no time difference, which makes communication with the director and production team more convenient; for another, the cost is lower. If done in the United States, the expenses of renting offices and purchasing equipment will be much higher.

Her business has also changed. In the era of live-action shooting, most overseas short drama production teams undertook contracted production: the platform provided scripts and funds, and the contractor was responsible for forming the crew, shooting and post-production, and getting production fees according to the project. A decent overseas live-action short drama costs at least 200,000 US dollars in production fees, and Fancy can earn about 10,000 US dollars after finishing one. She can follow up at most two and a half dramas at the same time in a month — two are being filmed, and one is in preparation. This is already her upper limit, because she has to follow the crew in person. Some producers take several dramas a month and then hand them over to assistants to supervise.

Most AI short dramas are self-produced, requiring you to raise investment and buy scripts by yourself, and then sell the finished dramas to the platforms. According to Fancy's estimation, the cost of an AI drama now is only about 30,000 to 50,000 RMB, less than 1/20 of the previous live-action short drama. AI dramas mainly make profits by distributing to various short drama platforms. In an ideal state, a drama with a cost of 50,000 RMB is sold to 5 platforms for "simultaneous premiere", 20,000 RMB for each, with a total revenue of 100,000 RMB, which can make a net profit of 50,000 RMB. But each drama needs to buy a script first, and then go through manual review and translation, which takes a very long time in the early stage, so she can only make two or three dramas a month in practice.

The price of selling dramas is still declining. The price at which platforms acquire dramas has dropped from 30,000 to 50,000 RMB per drama to 10,000 to 20,000 RMB, "some platforms simply say they no longer accept new dramas."

A practitioner of a short drama company told *Dingjiao One* that many platforms now rarely look for outsourcing, because "it is cheaper to produce by themselves", "once a drama becomes popular, they will modify it roughly, and there is almost no original content". In her opinion, there is no future in contracted production. Even if they can receive orders, the profit is very thin, not to mention most contractors on the market can no longer receive orders.

In the extremely competitive short drama industry, going overseas has always been regarded as a blue ocean. Now, this door is closing for small and medium producers, but opening wider for platforms that control traffic.

This scene is not unfamiliar to domestic short drama practitioners. After the rise of Hongguo, production companies are increasingly dependent on the revenue sharing and distribution rules of the platforms, and their bargaining space is constantly narrowing. Although the changes in the domestic and overseas markets have different reasons, they point to a similar trend: when the cost of content production continues to drop and the supply becomes more and more abundant, the platforms that control users and distribution channels are gaining greater initiative.

ByteDance is trying to take advantage of this trend to replicate the Hongguo model overseas.

02. A set of Hongguo tactics that disrupt overseas short drama market

Fancy has more than ten short drama apps installed on her mobile phone. Now after finishing each drama, she will carefully arrange the distribution order.

For the first round of distribution, she usually chooses paid platforms such as DramaBox and ReelShort. Gathering several platforms for simultaneous premiere can basically recover the cost. The second round is to put the drama on free channels such as TikTok and PineDrama. "How much pocket money you can get in the end depends on the traffic of this drama".

Tinghuadao, a leading domestic short drama studio, has also shifted its strategic focus to overseas in 2026, and jointly built the short drama platform FlickReels with Zhangwan. The team of Tinghuadao told *Dingjiao One* that new dramas will be prioritized on their own platform, and TikTok is more of a channel for simultaneous distribution or second-round distribution.

This is completely different from the distribution pattern that has taken shape in China. After the rise of Hongguo, free platforms have gradually become the main position for the premiere of short dramas, and the living space of paid mini-programs has been continuously narrowed. But overseas, the paid model still dominates.

Take the US market as an example. The weekly membership of ReelShort is usually 15 to 20 US dollars, and that of DramaBox is about 6 to 20 US dollars. If you unlock episodes by episodes, watching a short drama of about 80 episodes on ReelShort may cost 30 to 45 US dollars, equivalent to two to three hundred RMB. Although the price is not low, overseas audiences are still willing to pay for content.

In this market, PineDrama is regarded as the biggest variable.

At the end of 2025, ByteDance began to test PineDrama in markets such as the United States and Brazil, and it was officially launched in January this year.

PineDrama did not get off to a smooth start. According to Diandian Data, in the early stage of its launch, the average daily downloads of both ends in Brazil in a certain week were only about 50 times. After that, the platform gradually increased its user acquisition efforts. According to the monitoring of the overseas version of ADX under DataEye, at the beginning of March, PineDrama launched more than 2000 sets of advertising materials on average daily, and by late March, the number had exceeded 4000 sets, with a single-day maximum of 5662 sets. In April, its downloads exceeded 18 million, a month-on-month increase of 180%.

In July, PineDrama ranked first in the total download list of Brazilian app stores. Its downloads in Brazil that month were about 5.5 million, more than twice that of ReelShort in the same period. As of September 2026, its cumulative downloads exceeded 100 million, with about 7 million daily active users.

Source / PineDrama APP

People familiar with Hongguo can easily see similar tactics from PineDrama.

The first is free drama viewing and making profits through advertising. In September this year, TikTok opened up performance bidding ads for PineDrama, and advertisers can place ads in recommendation feeds, short drama channels and between episodes. The second is to improve user retention through tasks such as checking in and getting gold coins by watching dramas — Hongguo in China also used methods such as new user red envelopes and getting cash by watching dramas continuously to make users keep the app on their mobile phones. The third is to attract copyright holders through revenue sharing and rewards. From January to July this year, TikTok's short drama business has cumulatively shared more than 110 million US dollars with copyright holders, but this number includes in-station short dramas on TikTok, not the separate revenue sharing of PineDrama.

This is not ByteDance's first attempt at overseas short dramas.

Melolo, launched in 2024, focused on Southeast Asia. Although the free model was welcomed, its content was highly dependent on domestically produced translated dramas, with insufficient localization and relatively conservative advertising investment, so it failed to quickly open up the market. PikoShow, launched for the Japanese market in 2025, tried the paid model, but the main promoted content was still mainly translated dramas, with insufficient supply of new dramas. As user acquisition investment shrank, its downloads also declined rapidly.

In contrast, PineDrama did not come up with a completely new set of tactics. Free viewing, translated content, and user acquisition investment are all strategies that ByteDance has tried before. The difference is that this time, ByteDance pushed them to a larger market and invested more resources.

The first is content supply. PineDrama is in no hurry to build a local production team in every market, but allows the same short drama to enter different countries through multi-language translation. According to statistics from SocialPeta, among the about 1178 short dramas promoted by PineDrama in April this year, more than 90% involved translated content. Fancy found that as long as the drama is given to PineDrama, it can be translated into several languages, and users can register accounts in different countries to launch the drama locally. In contrast, when other short drama platforms enter new markets, they also need to invest in translation, dubbing, proofreading and local operation.

The second is to use AI to reduce the cost of localized production. In the past, to produce a short drama starring European and American actors, it was often necessary to form a local crew and bear the costs of actors, venues and shooting. Now, AI can generate images with European and American character images and local scene features, so that platforms do not have to fully rely on local live-action shooting, and can quickly expand content supply. When you open PineDrama, you can see that most of the top 100 popular works in the United States have AI-generated realistic human features.

ByteDance does not need to judge what kind of content is the most popular at the very beginning. Instead, it can supply content at low cost