The deal makes the studio behind 'Exhuma,' 'A Taxi Driver' and 'Itaewon Class' the latest major player in Korea's film industry to chase the booming — and crowded — vertical drama market.
, has signed a co-production deal with the microdrama app ReelShort — the latest sign that Korea’s film establishment is treating vertical drama as a serious business category rather than a passing fad.
-Pacific media industry conference in Bali — Showbox will co-produce short-form series based on ReelShort’s existing properties, with original Showbox-developed titles to follow. The content will stream exclusively on ReelShort. The first Korean-made batch — mostly romance fare, with titles likeCate Blanchett Heading Back to Class in Surprising New Career Move as She Calls it a "Creative Rumpus" That a studio of Showbox’s pedigree is making one-to-two-minute melodramas is a notable milestone for the form.
One of Korea’s major theatrical distributors, the company is behind some of the country’s biggest films — such as, which earned $93 million at the global box office in 2024 — and also produces premium K-drama series, including the Netflix hit. Showbox’s involvement holds out the promise of higher-quality K-drama production values for a format widely dismissed as cheaply made and disposable.
And Showbox is not alone — much of Korea’s entertainment establishment has begun exploring the microdrama format over the past year. CJ ENM’s streamer Tving launched a vertical short-form section in 2024, telecom KT’s Studio Genie, previously the conglomerate’s general drama-and-film production arm, refocused on short-form series, and several top-grossing filmmakers — among them Lee Byeong-heon, director of the all-time Korean box office champ— have dabbled in the genre.
The number of Korean short-form platforms swelled from around 20 in 2023 to nearly 90 by early 2025, as the industry wagered that Korea could command the higher-quality end of a market so far built on sheer speed and volume.powered the company to record earnings in 2024, its 2025 film slate misfired, with a string of theatrical flops, while the wider Korean box office has struggled to climb out of its post-pandemic slump. Microdramas — fast and cheap to produce — could offer an appealingly low-cost hedge.
Showbox said it would use the ReelShort deal as “a foundation to expand into a wider range of genres and formats. ” It made its first move into the format last December, producing two microdramas of its own — among them— and signing distribution deals with the platforms DramaBox and Vigloo. But the ReelShort co-production pact goes a step further, signaling the studio is spreading its bets rather than backing a single platform.
ReelShort — founded in 2022, with a claimed 70 million-plus monthly active users — is widely credited with breaking microdramas into the U.S. market, though it is itself Chinese-backed. Beijing-based COL Group owns 49 percent of ReeShort’s California-based parent company, Crazy Maple Studio. The Hollywood Reporter is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2026 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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