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Little drama
The deal makes the studio behind “Exhuma,” “A Taxi Driver” and “Itaewon Class” the latest major player in the Korean film industry to go after the booming and crowded vertical drama market.
Showbox, the South Korean studio behind the 2024 box office hits Exahomahas signed a co-production agreement with micro-drama app ReelShort — the latest sign that the Korean film establishment is treating vertical dramas as a serious business category rather than a passing fad.
Under the agreement – announced on the eve of APOS, the Asia-Pacific media industry conference in Bali – Showbox will co-produce short-form series based on existing ReelShort properties, with follow-ups to original titles developed by Showbox. The content will be broadcast exclusively on ReelShort. The first batch is Korean-made – mostly romantic fare, with titles like Tell me not to love you, My secret lover is his brother and The Queen never cries – indicates that Showbox is currently operating within the usual genre conventions of small dramas.
The creation of a studio out of Showbox one- to two-minute melodramas is a major milestone in this model. The company is one of Korea’s major theatrical distribution companies, and is behind some of the country’s biggest films – e.g Exahomawhich grossed $93 million at the global box office in 2024 – and also produces premium Korean drama series, including the hit Netflix series A fatal paradox. Showbox’s involvement holds the promise of high-quality K-drama production values for a format that has been widely dismissed as cheap and disposable.
And Showbox is not alone, as many entertainment organizations in Korea have begun exploring the mini-drama format over the past year. CJ ENM’s broadcaster Tving launched a short-form vertical division in 2024, and telecommunications company KT’s Studio Genie, previously the group’s general drama and film production arm, has refocused on miniseries, and several high-grossing filmmakers — among them Lee Byeong-heon, the director of Korea’s all-time box office champ. Extreme function -I got involved in this genre. The number of Korean short rigs swelled from about 20 in 2023 to nearly 90 by early 2025, as the industry bet that Korea could command the higher quality of a market built so far on sheer speed and volume.
For Showbox, the move also reflects an attempt to diversify. after Exahoma The company pushed to record profits in 2024, and its 2025 film slate flopped, with a string of theatrical flops, while the broader Korean box office struggled to emerge from a post-pandemic slump. Small dramas—produced quickly and cheaply—can provide an attractive, low-cost hedge. Showbox said it will use the ReelShort deal “as a foundation to expand into a broader range of genres and formats.” She made her first foray into the format last December, producing two of her own mini-dramas – among them Bridal Shower: The Lost Bride — And signing distribution deals with the DramaBox and Vigloo platforms. But ReelShort’s co-production agreement goes further, suggesting that the studio is spreading its bets rather than supporting a single platform.
ReelShort – founded in 2022, with a claimed over 70 million monthly active users – is widely credited with bringing micro-dramas into the US market, although it is itself backed by China. Beijing-based COL Group owns 49 percent of ReeShort’s California-based parent company, Crazy Maple Studio.
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