Kenan Thompson Stars in a Vertical Microdrama as Hollywood Bets Big on One-Minute Episodes
Kenan Thompson, the longest-running cast member on Saturday Night Live, is set to star in MisTaken, a vertical microdrama series produced by 100 Zeros — a venture launched by Google and Range Media Partners — as Hollywood scrambles to crack a format that has already pulled in billions of dollars globally. The news, reported by Variety on 21 August 2026, lands as the microdrama market surges: Reuters projects the format will generate $1.5 billion in U.S. revenue in the current year and nearly $2 billion the year after.
Vertical microdramas are series shot to be watched on a phone, held upright. A typical show runs about 60 episodes, each lasting barely a minute, with minimal production values, mostly unknown actors and average budgets of around $250,000, according to Variety. The stories run on instantly recognisable tropes — whirlwind romance, ruthless CEOs, betrayed lovers, reincarnated rivals, revenge arcs — and every few seconds deliver an emotional beat or a cliff-hanger designed to push the viewer straight into the next episode. Vertical Romance co-founder Enzo Semmens compared the format to a game of Candy Crush built around cliff-hangers, Variety reported.
The boom began earlier this decade in China, where tech platforms produced addictive serialised shorts cheaply and at volume. As Chinese microdramas moved west, U.S. platforms DramaBox and ReelShort spent millions marketing them and quickly built a marketplace. Vertically shot microdramas attracted 66 million monthly active users in the U.S. the prior year, according to Reuters. The global market has been valued at $26 billion, Variety reported in November 2025. Research firm Omdia put global microdrama revenues at $11 billion in 2025, projected to reach $14 billion by the end of 2026 — and found that microdramas had overtaken streaming services in mobile engagement, per Omdia.
100 Zeros is not alone in chasing the format. Director McG and The Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss are among the high-profile names working in the microdrama space through the Google–Range venture, Variety reported. Thompson's casting in MisTaken signals how far the format has travelled from its low-budget, no-name origins: a recognised network television star headlining a series of one-minute episodes.
For anyone who remembers Quibi, the comparison is unavoidable — and Variety drew it explicitly. Quibi, founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, launched in April 2020 and shut down within six months, having spent more than $1 billion on high-end short-form projects from A-list producers including Guillermo del Toro, Antoine Fuqua and Sam Raimi. It sold its library to Roku for $100 million. Quibi failed, Variety reported, partly because consumers would not pay hefty subscription fees for premium shorts when free content was available on YouTube and TikTok, partly because Quibi did not own its programming, and partly because of the pandemic's timing.
The microdrama wave looks different on paper: cheaper, built for free-to-start models, and already proven at scale in China. Whether the names now attached — Google, Range, Thompson — translate that model into something durable in the U.S. is a question the next round of viewership and revenue figures will answer.
