Interview · R:ID ╳ Tina Randolph Contogenis ❘ Vertical Isn’t Emerging, It Emerged When Agents Took It Seriously

Vertical Is Not a Side Project. Tina Randolph Contogenis, founder of Eris Talent Agency, the first Hollywood agency to open a division specifically dedicated to vertical-drama actors. ⁙ Opening ▜ ▜ Talent agencies sit between production demand and actor availability. Their role is not simply to broker work, but to translate shifting production

Vertical Drama Review: His Princess From Nowhere (2025)

⚈ ⚈ It truly feels like cinema, quietly disguised as a vertical. - Review by Liz @portraitstorydiaries This one haunted me. A crown made of secrets. I still couldn’t shake it long after the final episode ended. There is something so beautifully unsettling about this story. It doesn’t rush to

Vertical Drama Weekly: TikTok, Disney+, and Investors Double [...]

✱ From TikTok’s product experiments, to capital moving decisively into micro-drama, to Disney and CES formalizing vertical video as an industry-wide direction, the question has quietly shifted. Week of Jan 11–17, 2026 Join Real Reel TikTok quietly launches PineDrama, a standalone micro-drama app TikTok has begun testing a standalone

Interview · R:ID ╳ Dir. Sining XIANG ❘ After 500 Million Views

THE FIRST AUTEUR OF THE ALGORITHM AGE? 500 Million Views, Zero Illusions - A Director Redraws His Boundaries. ⁙ Opening ▙ ▙ When the frame shrinks and the algorithm accelerates faster than intention, what remains of the person behind the camera? There is a new kind of director emerging, not the auteur with

UPCUT. ｜Top 10 Vertical Drama Male Actors: Actors’ Place in the Scroll

× In the vertical world, actors no longer enter. They pass through. They don’t wait for the audience to settle in. They are seen, judged, and remembered in the instant of a thumb’s scroll. Top 10 Actors’ Place in the Scroll is not a ranking, and not a deep

Vertical Drama Review: The Road Between Us

⚈ ⚈ There are films that entertain you, films that move you, and then there are films that quietly rearrange something inside your chest. The Road Between Us is firmly in that last category ... - Review by Dalia Garces @verticalfilmslover on all socials  A Masterclass in Intimate, Adult Storytelling There are films

Vertical Drama Weekly: Capital Tightens, Platforms Integrate Vertical Feeds [...]

✱ Capital Tightens, Platforms Integrate Vertical Feeds, Local Apps Emerge and Vertical IP Journeys Expand Week of Jan 3–10, 2026 Join Real Reel Micro-dramas enter 2026 facing their first real test. A new analysis published by Business Insider frames 2026 as a reckoning year for vertical micro-dramas after a breakout

Interview · R:ID ╳ Alex Montalvo ❘ Hollywood’s First Serious Bet on Vertical Drama

From Algorithms to Decisions, Not Theory. GammaTime Co-Founder & CCO Alex Montalvo on Taste Infrastructure, Content Responsibility, and Scaling Without Dilution. ⁙ Opening ▜ ▜ While much of the industry is still arguing over whether vertical drama is a lasting medium or a temporary trend, GammaTime has stopped participating in that debate. For

Vertical Drama Review: 30 Days To Love

⚈ ⚈ 30 Days To Love stands out as a refreshing and confident example of how the genre can evolve without relying on shock-driven shortcuts. - This review is written by Aline from I Love Verticals. As a long-time admirer of comedy and romantic comedies in the Vertical space, 30 Days To

Vertical Drama Weekly: TikTok rewires distribution, Japan exports vertical co-productions[...]

✱ TikTok rewires distribution, Japan exports vertical co-productions, the U.K. builds standards, and China’s state broadcaster makes short drama official Week of Dec 19–Jan 3  Join Real Reel ⁙ TikTok quietly turns micro-dramas into a native content category. In the most consequential structural shift of the past two weeks,

Interview · R:ID ╳ Sasha Tkachenko ❘ Vertical Storytelling Isn’t an Escape. It’s Discipline and Delivery.

From Television to Vertical, Not an Escape. My Drama Studio Head Sasha Tkachenko on Narrative Compression, Creative Control, and Sustained Delivery. ⁙ Opening ▜ ▜ At a moment when vertical drama is increasingly reduced to an “algorithmic product,” the forces that truly shape its form are often not algorithms themselves, but the people

Obs.[2025 Real Reel Year-End Picks]

▜ ▜ From Signals to Systems, and the Stories That Shaped Them 2025 is coming to a close, and for vertical drama, this was not a year of hype, it was a year of structure. - What once felt experimental became structured: clear business models, recognizable storytelling, global expansion, and real career