'Summer Session' Is Heading to Phones and Cinemas
Clarence Hammond's romantic short story Summer Session is being developed twice over: as a microdrama and as a feature film. Deadline reported the plan on 28 October 2026.
A microdrama is a short, serialised drama made for phone screens. Its episodes run only a few minutes each, and viewers tend to watch them in long binges. The Summer Session version will be shot in vertical format, meaning it is framed to be watched upright on a phone, not sideways on a TV.
The feature film will be a full-length movie made for cinemas and other large screens. Hammond is writing the script for that version himself, adapting his own story.
Both versions will be directed by Kristen Brancaccio. She has directed more than 20 microdramas for services including TikTok, ReelShort, NetShort and DramaShorts. Her best-known recent project is Issa Rae's microdrama Screen Time, which drew more than 250 million views in its first month on TikTok, according to Deadline.
Hammond will produce alongside Maria Frisk and Michael Napoliello, who work through Ancora Entertainment. Katie Zipkin-Leed of Artists First and Matt Shepley of Select Management Group are also producers on the project.
Developing one story across two formats is a route that many writers and producers now take, because a phone audience and a cinema audience can be reached from the same source material. Here, the two versions share a writer, a director and a set of producers. Whether they share a platform, a release date or a budget has not been announced.
For now, the news is simple. A short story has found a home in two formats, and a director with a long run of phone-first work will bring both to the screen.
