As numerous participants flock into the short drama sector, why does the star appeal no longer work?
Two tracks have accommodated most of the frustrated and outdated celebrities in the entertainment industry, becoming a gathering place for celebrities to re-employ: one is live-stream e-commerce, and the other is short dramas. The former has successfully created Jia Nailiang, the top influencer in the current celebrity live-stream sales sector, whose GMV of live-stream sales on this year's Double 11 reached 560 million yuan, while the latter has not yet produced a leading top-tier player for the time being.
A large number of celebrities are pouring into the short drama track, including Shu Chang, Carman Lee, Liu Xiaoqing, Tang Guoqiang, Stephen Chow, Huang Xiaoming, Zhao Lusi, Yu Zheng... They either participate in the performance in person as actors, or participate in the production behind the scenes as directors or producers.
With the changes in the short drama industry, their participation forms have been continuously expanded, extending from live-action short dramas to AI short dramas. Celebrity Qi Wei authorized her own image to AI short dramas, while Hong Kong star Irene Wan authorized her real-life image to participate in the star AI short drama *The Nine-Tailed Divine Descends* in a special alternative way.
The influx of celebrities into short dramas looks like a "dimensionality reduction strike". However, when we lay out the view counts data, cost structure and platform recommendation logic, we will find that most of these celebrity short dramas flop while very few become hits. A person in charge of a leading short drama company told Tech Planet that young people nowadays do not recognize celebrities, and the short drama sector has its own ecosystem.
Celebrities Pour Into the Short Drama Sector
It is no longer new for celebrities to enter the short drama sector. When the first wave of celebrities officially stepped into the short drama industry, most of them personally played the male and female lead roles.
Data from Hongguo Platform shows that Shu Chang has participated in 5 short dramas, Liu Xiaoqing has appeared in 4 of which one is marked to be launched soon on Hongguo, and Yang Rong has acted in 4. Later, the team kept growing, and directors and actors including Stephen Chow, Wong Jing, Huang Xiaoming also joined the sector in person, starting to produce, shoot and make short dramas. Short dramas such as *The Billionaire Foolish Prince*, *Golden Pig and Jade Leaf*, *A Westward Odyssey Parody*, *The Top Queen* were launched one after another.
Stephen Chow even set up a short drama company named "9527 Theater" specially in 2024, which is jointly developed and operated with Douyin. It is the first short drama label initiated by top Chinese-language filmmakers and jointly operated by the official platform. Huang Xiaoming also founded the short drama company Yican Light and Shadow in 2025, invested in the short drama company Bingwu Film and Television, and signed more than 20 short drama actors to lay out the short drama actor brokerage business.
The reasons why celebrities pour into the short drama track are not complicated. The number of long drama projects starting shooting has plummeted, and leading role resources are concentrated on traffic actors, so a group of actors who have representative works but no traffic can hardly get access to new shooting projects. Long dramas require large capital investment, have a long payback period, and are difficult to make profits. In contrast, the short drama market is growing continuously: in 2024, the domestic micro-short drama market reached a scale of 50.44 billion yuan, exceeding the annual national movie box office in terms of figures for the first time; in 2025, the total annual output value of micro-short dramas and comic dramas exceeded 100 billion yuan, and the number of micro-short drama users across the country reached 664 million.
In 2026, the scale of the short drama market is expected to reach 120 billion yuan. However, the live-action short drama sector is on the wane while the AI short drama sector is rising. Celebrities begin to enter the short drama sector in another way: authorizing their real-life images. Qi Wei becomes the first entertainer in mainland China's entertainment industry who voluntarily opens AI image authorization. However, her first AI short drama *Doomsday Summer* has only released a concept trailer so far, and the launch date of the full episodes is to be determined. The AI short drama *The Nine-Tailed Divine Descends* authorized by Irene Wan's real-life image becomes the first AI short drama with authorized real-life image of a celebrity.
The company of director Yu Zheng has also started to make efforts on AI short dramas. According to Tech Planet, many signed actors of Huanyu Film and Television will participate in the company's self-produced AI short dramas in the form of real-person shooting plus image authorization. Several AI short dramas that the company has released previews for are expected to be produced and launched before the end of the year.
There are also celebrities who go against the trend. In late October, the first short drama supervised by Zhao Lusi, *SONDER · I Am Not an NPC*, was launched. This short drama adopts the unit drama form, consisting of four stories with 3 episodes for each story. From the perspective of broadcast effect, neither its public praise nor popularity is very high. Among them, the story collection *This Cold Palace Is Not So Cold* with the highest view count only has 18.556 million views, while the total view count of the other three story collections is less than 40 million. Compared with the data of short dramas that often have billions of views, *SONDER · I Am Not an NPC* can only be classified as a "flop" short drama that is complained by netizens.
Compared with the light mode that celebrities themselves play roles in short dramas, the mode of supervising, establishing short drama companies to produce and make short dramas is much heavier. It seems that Huang Xiaoming has invested the most in the short drama track at present.
Most Flop, Hard to Recoup Costs
There are not many celebrities who have truly reaped the dividends of the short drama industry.
The number of short dramas that celebrities star in or participate in producing is very limited. Data from the National Radio and Television Administration shows that in the first 8 months of 2026, 430,000 micro-short dramas were launched across the country, 13 times the number of the whole year of 2025. The proportion of celebrity short dramas is less than a tiny fraction.
Among the short dramas participated in by "outdated" celebrities, most flop while very few become hits.
Shu Chang is counted as one of the actors with the highest view counts among the short dramas starred by celebrities. Her Hongguo homepage shows that she is the leading actor of a short drama with over 1 billion views. The popularity of her 5 short dramas is roughly between 30 million and 40 million. The 4 short dramas Yang Rong starred in also have a popularity of around 30 million, among which one short drama *Twenty Nine* has as high as 630 million views on Douyin. The short dramas that Michelle Ye participated in have very high popularity, but the role she played is not the female lead.
However, the maximum dividend these celebrities can get from short dramas is only the appearance fee, which is almost negligible compared with the tens of millions or hundreds of millions of remuneration that is common in the entertainment industry.
Most of the other celebrity short dramas flop quietly, and many users do not even know that these short dramas have been launched. Some celebrity short dramas cannot even be searched on platforms such as Douyin and Hongguo.
*Love Letter from the Night Port*, produced and supervised by the company under Huang Xiaoming, has a popularity value of 23.69 million on Hongguo, which still has a certain gap compared with the popularity value of over 40 million of hit short dramas.
Even the recently marketed first AI short drama with authorized real-life image of celebrity Irene Wan, *The Nine-Tailed Divine Descends*, is marked as a "hit drama" on Taobao. But for this 9-episode "hit drama", the number of likes and comments on the first episode is only 4,510 and 165 respectively. The user interaction of subsequent episodes gets less and less, and the number of likes for episodes after the 6th is only in single digits. In comparison, other hit short dramas on Taobao can get tens of thousands of likes. This short drama is essentially more like a short drama customized by Taobao short drama for brands, whose effect and quality are only visible to the brand.
Celebrities participating in short dramas are more of a casual hobby. There are very few celebrities who are still acting in short dramas this year. Li Ming, the person in charge of a short drama company, told Tech Planet that their team had invited celebrities to act in short dramas very early, but they were all "outdated" celebrities, including those from Hong Kong and mainland China, and it is not convenient to reveal who they are specifically. But the daily remuneration of these celebrities for acting in short dramas is usually around 8,000 to 10,000 yuan. "A-list popular celebrities will not come to shoot short dramas. The discrimination chain in the short drama industry still exists, even though the market scale formed by the industry can not be underestimated."
The role that celebrities play in short dramas is mostly to create gimmicks and attract capital attention. Li Ming said that it is very important to tell stories to investors and the outside world. Apart from that, the influence of celebrities in short dramas is limited. "Short dramas have a very fast rhythm, and they can not adapt to it."
The traffic advantage of celebrities fails in the short drama industry. In terms of actor cost, celebrities often increase the input cost of the whole short drama. The first vertical-screen micro-short drama *Jitianzhao* produced by Yu Zheng is claimed to have an investment of 8 million yuan, but the final broadcast popularity is only over 18 million. The short drama *SONDER · I Am Not an NPC* supervised by Zhao Lusi is rumored in the industry to have an investment at the million-yuan level, and it is difficult to recoup the cost through revenue sharing given its dismal view count.
Those celebrity short dramas that suffer huge losses are usually paid by the platforms in the end, or compensated through other live-stream sales forms.
The First Generation of Celebrity Short Dramas Are Waning
For celebrities, short dramas have directly broadened their career boundaries.
In the view of Li Huan, a film and television practitioner, celebrities acting in live-action short dramas is a two-way choice of the market, which is still the general trend at present. On the positive side, some veteran actors have found a new way out from short dramas, and their acting skills and experience can also help improve the overall quality of short dramas. At the Golden Eagle Festival Micro-short Drama Ceremony not long ago, Li Lingyu was awarded the "Annual Actress" for her role in the short drama about an aunt breaking into the workplace.
But not all celebrities are suitable for short dramas. Li Huan said that short dramas have very high requirements for actors' appearance. For long drama actors who have high appearance and high popularity, their remuneration is relatively very high. While celebrities who are willing to act in short dramas are sometimes complained about their appearance.
Wang Mian, the person in charge of another short drama company, also told Tech Planet that short dramas have their own ecosystem, and their production team rarely considers using celebrities. The mismatch between celebrities and short dramas lies in that, first, real A-list celebrities look down on short dramas, and second, their appearance fees are very high. Moreover, from the perspective of the audience, young people do not recognize celebrities in the short drama industry.
Since the outbreak of the short drama industry, almost all the hit short dramas born in the market have nothing to do with celebrities. The short drama track has even created a group of native short drama stars from its own industry. In a sense, short dramas do not need "celebrities". The Bingwu Film and Television invested by Huang Xiaoming has produced 29 short dramas, some of which have 111 episodes but only more than 10,000 views, and only one of its short dramas has exceeded 100 million views, with a not very high hit rate.
A staff member of a leading short drama company said that if celebrities only want to use their own traffic to drive the drama or convert business income, it is definitely not sustainable.
At present, the first generation of celebrities who entered the short drama track have begun to fade out.
In November 2026, Stephen Chow's short drama label company completed its first major structural adjustment since its establishment, and its operating entity has undergone major changes. The operating entity of "9527 Theater" and Gangganghao Film and Television jointly set up a joint venture company, and Gangganghao Film and Television will take the lead in daily operation afterwards. It seems that Stephen Chow is no longer deeply bound to short dramas.
On October 28, writer Rao Xueman posted on Weibo that she would no longer shoot vertical-screen short dramas. She mentioned in the post that *The Little Love Song in the Glimmer* has withstood everything that a vertical-screen short drama cannot bear. The other short dramas produced by her also do not have very good view data.
With the wane of live-action short dramas, it has become more difficult for celebrities to get a share of the short drama market. At present, celebrities authorizing their real-life images to act in AI short dramas has become a new trend, but it remains unknown whether a real hit can be born in the future.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Tech Planet", written by Zhai Yuanyuan, published with authorization from 36Kr.