COL Group and CP Group Team Up to Bring Short-Form Vertical Drama to Thailand

Two companies from very different worlds — one a Chinese microdrama pioneer, the other a Thai conglomerate spanning agriculture, telecoms and retail — have joined forces to build Thailand's short-form drama business from the ground up.

COL Group and CP Group announced a partnership on 26 August 2026 that links creative training, local content production and distribution under a single initiative, according to Variety. The deal centres on a talent incubation programme the two firms will run jointly with an academic institution in Thailand, aiming to train a new generation of local creators.

Short-form dramas — also called microdramas or vertical dramas — are episodic stories designed for phone viewing, filmed in a vertical format and often released in bite-sized instalments. COL Group is an early mover in the format across the Chinese and U.S. markets. Its FlareFlow app, one of the leading vertical drama platforms worldwide, counts more than 45 million registered users.

CP Group is one of Thailand's biggest conglomerates, with operations in 23 countries covering agriculture, retail, telecoms, e-wallets, tech and media. It owns True Corporation, the telecom and digital services company whose short-form drama app, Tatang by TrueID, will become a key distribution channel under the partnership.

As part of the tie-up, FlareFlow will get a dedicated branded section called FlareFlow Mini inside Tatang by TrueID. The corner is scheduled to launch in September 2026 and will house FlareFlow's vertical-drama catalogue for Thai audiences, with new titles added weekly. The partners also plan joint promotional efforts across the wider CP and True Group consumer network — spanning telecoms, e-payments, retail and marketing — to boost visibility for FlareFlow titles in Thailand.

A second creative strand involves a "Thai Remake Collaboration." COL Group and CP Group will adapt select titles from COL Group's and FlareFlow's libraries for Thai viewers, reworking the stories with Thai characters, settings and language using AIGC-enabled production tools — that is, artificial intelligence-generated content used to speed up parts of the production pipeline.

Patsakorn Laohrenu, director of business development of content and media group at CP Group, said the partnership connects education with real industry opportunities and aims to build stronger capabilities for Thai creators. Timothy Oh, general manager of COL Group and chief marketing officer of FlareFlow, said the deal brings together talent, content and distribution to contribute to a stronger short-form entertainment ecosystem in Thailand.

For context, COL Group has been expanding its global footprint. In August 2025, the company announced the launch of a global content distribution division, positioning itself as a reseller of micro-dramas worldwide, as reported by Deadline. In June 2026, COL Group and Virtue Asia formed a partnership to package advertising opportunities for regional marketers across microdrama and vertical video in Southeast Asia, according to Variety.

The Thailand deal adds a third layer to that push: not just selling content into a market, but training the people who will make the next wave of it, adapting existing stories for local audiences, and placing everything inside an app run by one of the country's most powerful corporate networks.