Microdramas have a reputation that even the CEO of one of the biggest production companies behind the vertical video format can’t deny.
Snow Story Productions CEO Austin Herring said the big hits in microdramas were “borderline unwatchable” when he entered the field in 2024, where salacious and soap opera-level storytelling were the norm. But he remained committed to elevating the production standard.
Since its first microdrama project two years ago, Snow Story has worked to create a reputation for higher quality content that hits with verticals viewers by being more selective with scripts and pushing for stronger writing with each new installment.
The company’s first microdrama, “Pregnant by Ex’s Dad,” became a hit for ReelShort, earning 64.7 million views to date. Since then, the company has produced a number of big hits including “The Virgin and The Billionaire,” which has garnered 194 million views to date. Snow Story produced 28 verticals in 2025 and is projected to produce over 100 in 2026.
Those numbers are mind-boggling for a standard production company, and speaks to the industry’s representation for churning out content regardless of quality. But Snow Story’s success has been hard-won, with the company looking to stand out in the $11 billion microdramas industry by elevating content while still keeping costs down.
For Herring, it’s not about fixing the format but innovating within the structure that has proven successful. After a decade in the commercial production space, the company’s focus has shifted to its new microdrama venture and it’s scaling quickly.
“These vertical companies have your attention,” he said. “It’s when you’re in line at the bank, when you’re sitting on the toilet, when you’re lying in bed, about to go to sleep, or just woke up, or waiting for the bus or waiting to get on an airplane.
“They have your attention all the time at every spare two or three minutes that you have,” he said. “That’s a big deal, and that’s a huge gain for those companies.”
Indeed, Hollywood is chasing the microdramas trend with big names and established studios getting into the space, from Issa Rae to Fox.
Herring said that his commercial production has been “totally eclipsed’ by verticals in the last two years due to the demand necessary to keep up with the hungry fanbase. While the content at first seemed below his standards, it did not scare him away from trying to elevate the space outright.
The budgets and the production timeline were similar to that of commercials, so for Herring the biggest hurdle was creating content that was up to Snow Story’s standards.
“I have a philosophy that I’m not going to say no to most things,” Herring told TheWrap. “I’m going to try to figure out how to make it profitable, so I wasn’t turned off by it.”
The producer was first approached to create a vertical during the SAG/WGA strike. Actors and crew members were willing to take a pay cut in order to get a gig then, Herring said, so he was able to build an experienced set.
His credibility from his commercial history working with clients like Disney and Facebook and A-list talent like The Rock and Tom Holland impressed the international vertical apps.
“Most of the production companies that were making stuff were just college kids with cameras and a group of friends. They weren’t proper production companies,” Herring said of the early days. “That’s totally changed now.”
Cheaper, faster
Three years later, companies like Snow Story have become production factories, making up to 100 productions a year both domestically and abroad. Snow Story specifically shoots verticals in locations across the country: Los Angeles, for its “unrivaled” standing sets; Atlanta, for its school locations and nature; Charlotte, for its mansions and lakes; and London, for its unique British look.
Different permitting costs factor into where Snow Story shoots as well. The company is expanding to include Rio and Vancouver as shooting locations in 2026.
The budgets for microdramas are intentionally low. The productions shoot on a 10-day timeline and lean on non-union work to make a profit. Herring said Snow Story lost money on the first few productions in order to figure out the balance between quality and what was realistic.
“A lot of the red carpet that you typically roll out for clients, there’s just no money to do any of that,” Herring said of how the company adapted within the parameters. “We’re having the barest of bare bones craft, the cheapest of catering, and any bell or any whistle that we can get rid of that isn’t necessary. I do think that that’s a really cool aspect of the vertical industry.”
But Herring argued that the tighter purse strings in the microdrama world should be applied to Hollywood film and TV productions at large.
“One of the problems that Hollywood has been having, and one of the reasons that Hollywood has slowed down significantly, is that we were just spending too much money,” Herring said. “The budgets have just gotten kind of out of control, and so I think that there’s an aspect of these that we’re really streamlining [production] and we’re cutting all the fat.”
Snow Story is a full-scale operation. It not only shoots the projects, it builds them from the ground up.
The production company’s list of clients in the vertical space is over a dozen. Sometimes the leading apps pitch scripts, other times Snow Story will write them in house. Because the demand for each app is so high, these companies will look to Snow Story for concepts and scripts to greenlight to their audiences.
From there, Snow Story handles all of the logistics from concept through pre-production to post, depending on the client.
“Different apps very much have different tastes, different expectations,” he explained. “Each of the apps have a very distinct editing style that they think needs to be in place.”
Quality control
Microdramas have a reputation for producing nearlty anything, but that’s not the case with Snow Story.
“We just passed on a script because it wasn’t up to our quality,” he said. “We have gotten a reputation as having the best scripts, whether that’s scripts that we write or scripts that are coming from clients.”
He does not take it lightly. Some of the company’s most popular verticals include “Sleeping with the President,” “Double Life of My Military Man,” “Summer Situationship” and “Hollywood & Harvard.”
What makes Snow Story unique, though, is how it elevates the content. Herring said that they will often reject scripts or demand to make changes before producing a microdrama.
“When we first started, what I was presented with as being the big hits in the vertical space were borderline unwatchable in my opinion,” he said. “The acting was bad, the editing was bad, the story, the scripts were bad. It felt like it was written by Google Translate.”
Herring said he felt like the bar was so low they could “leap right over” it.
As more traditional Hollywood players enter the microdramas space, Herring warns that these are not like movies or television. They succeed because they scratch a different itch.
“I’m seeing a lot of people making the mistake of thinking that this is TV or movies,” he said. “Trying to fix them, trying to turn them into movies, trying to scale up the production value in a lot of cases, those are mistakes.”
He clarified that the microdramas are competing with TikTok and YouTube shorts for attention more than they’re competing with Netflix, HBO and other traditional entertainment programming.
“These are shows that are very tightly written, that are designed to grab your attention and hold it in a way that has been slowly lost,” he said. “Writers and filmmakers are getting, in my opinion, a little bit lazy. They’re getting a little bit fast and loose about the need to grab and hold audiences’ attention.”
“Verticals are kind of coming back to doing that out of necessity,” he added. “If you don’t grab their attention and hold it within those first five to 10 minutes, they’re not going to pay 50 cents to get through that paywall.”
The post How One Microdrama Maker Wants to Elevate Quality While Producing 100 Shows a Year | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.
