Noah Fearnley is known to some for his portrayal of Calvin Klein model Michael Bergin in Disney+’s Love Story. But for a larger section of the internet, he’s better recognised as Theo Vale, the vampire in Stake To The Heart. Or maybe it’s as Ethan Scott, the CEO from Billionaire Dad Is Into Me – or even brooding mafia boss Alexander Kane from Married The Mafioso I Saved. Because 27-year-old Fearnley’s background isn’t on stage or the big screen – it’s as one of the biggest micro-drama actors in this exploding industry.
Micro-dramas, or vertical movies, as Fearnley refers to them, are bite-sized, easily digestible episodes filmed in a vertical format, designed to be watched on a phone. Often, they’re no more than a minute long, with each episode usually ending on a cliffhanger, encouraging the user to click (and pay for) the next episode. There can be anywhere between 20 to 100 episodes in a single movie. In short (pardon the pun), they’re tiny TV shows you can consume while waiting for the kettle to boil. They began in China around 2018, and by 2022, the US had joined the market, sharing shows on DramaBox, ReelShort and GoodShort. Not surprisingly, many have been making their way over to TikTok, with the UK slowly following suit and many vertical drama production companies, including OnSet Octopus, popping up.
Noah was one of the early adopters of the industry and has now appeared in more than 50 vertical movies, after his traditional roles dried up due to the SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023. In the early days, micro-dramas were filmed on phones, but now they’re full-scale productions – and, unlike traditional film sets, where they shoot on average one to two pages of script a day, micro-dramas film 15 pages. Scripts are created by a mixture of AI, international pick-ups (where they recreate stories for different regions) and original ideas, all designed to shock and entice people to click the next episode, thanks to their OTT plot lines.
If a classic 45-minute TV drama episode were to feature similar plots, the show would be unlikely to get a season renewal; but in the micro format, fans can’t get enough of the snappy, often- clichéd dramas. It’s easy to point to our shortening attention spans and constant need for the next ‘big thing’ as the reason for the popularity of these dramas. But short-form content has actually been around for hundreds of years, with novels in the 19th century (including the majority of Dickens’ work) often being released in weekly or monthly instalments, rather than in their entirety. The only difference is that Victorian readers couldn’t swipe to the next episode.
Fearnley believes part of the appeal is to look towards the past, citing how actors were once tied to one studio and would create multiple movies, leading to a familiarity and dedication from an audience. "We’re not movie stars. But in Old Hollywood terms, it’s similar – fans are watching the same faces [all the time], because we’re turning around maybe two or three [movies] a month. They’re always coming out, and so the fans always have something to watch," he explains.
Unlike the old studio system, though, fans of micro-dramas have direct and instant access to the people creating them. Charlotte Henderson, better known to many as The Nursery Nurse, has built a following of over five million on TikTok, thanks to her micro-drama skits based in a UK nursery. Henderson believes the key to her success – and why fans keep coming back – is their ability to be involved in the narrative of the story. While some fans would love nothing more than to cast an entire film series, this is usually out of reach (no matter how many times they message the director). But with Henderson’s micro-dramas, they’re able to directly impact what they’re watching.
"I’ll always listen to the followers and fans," she tells us. "If I find a storyline is going in a certain direction [that] they’re not really gelling with, I’ll redirect it, so they feel more connected to the characters. I will see comments like, 'I’d love to see X, Y and Z one day,' and then sprinkle those throughout. Ultimately it’s about trying to give back to the audience."
By 2030, the global micro-drama industry is expected to reach $25bn (£18.6bn), with China making up a large percentage of that, and Hollywood is looking for a piece of the pie. In 2025 Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner, along with others, invested $14m (£10.4m) in the micro-drama app GammaTime, and in the past year alone Disney+, Prime Video and Netflix have all unveiled plans to expand their vertical offerings for customers in the coming years.
So, one day could we see icons such as Leonardo DiCaprio starring in micro-dramas? "If you put those old Hollywood stars in today’s era, they would be doing them [micro-dramas]," Fearnley insists – and Henderson, who releases 21 videos a week, agrees. "I do see micro-dramas becoming the main source of entertainment for a lot of people," she reflects. "There’s a shift happening." DiCaprio, over to you.
