How SAG-AFTRA Is Dragging Hollywood Into the Vertical Microdrama Boom

For the rapidly evolving microseries medium, what a difference a year — and an agreement with SAG-AFTRA — makes.

Prior to the union’s independent Verticals Agreement, which marked its one-year anniversary last week, microseries lived up to their reputation for being swiftly assembled shoestring-budget affairs featuring fresh-faced, low-paid talent. Now, James Franco, Mario Lopez and Taye Diggs are just some of the names headlining the medium.

The shift reflects a broader evolution in the microdrama business, which has grown from a largely nonunion model popularized in China into a production ecosystem increasingly intersecting with Hollywood. SAG-AFTRA’s independent Verticals Agreement helped open the door for producers to hire union performers for the format’s notoriously small-scale productions.

They’ve also brought some structure and legitimacy to the medium. Productions now offer minimum salaries, overtime pay and even health care benefits. Bigger-name talent is now more open to verticals thanks to the protections the agreement brings.

While SAG-approved productions still represent a fraction of the hundreds of microseries produced each year, the union told TheWrap that they have signed off on dozens of productions with the agreement, though a spokesperson would not specify the exact number.

Independent production company Knockout Shorts has produced five SAG productions, and Snow Story Productions has produced hundreds of verticals but just three union projects. Platforms like ReelShort and CandyJar have started producing their own SAG verticals, but they also do not account for the bulk of their content, which number in the hundreds.

But the entry of union projects into the microdramas space has allowed for greater diversification of genre while also bringing new audiences into the medium. Issa Rae’s SAG vertical production “Screentime” brought in record viewership for TikTok and Pine Drama. Diggs drew new audiences with his microdrama “Tides of Temptation” made in collaboration with Lifetime and his platform Microhouse Films.

As producers experiment with new genres and recognizable Hollywood names, the agreement is positioning verticals as more than a niche corner of the entertainment business — and potentially a new entry point for performers, creators and production companies.

Representatives for SAG-AFTRA told TheWrap that the union has worked closely with independent producers and platforms alike to streamline the process.

For the union, the challenge has been building a process that accommodates a production model known for its speed, long hours and relatively lean budgets while maintaining protections around compensation, workplace safety, pension and health contributions and artificial intelligence. Jessica Johnson, deputy chief contracts officer for SAG, said that in early conversations with platforms, their biggest concern was that the union would not be able to keep up with its speed.

“They operate very quickly and they were afraid that working with SAG-AFTRA would slow them down, and that’s just not been the case,” Johnson told TheWrap. “The union has developed a dedicated application process for vertical productions, allowing producers to submit projects through a streamlined system.”

Snow Story echoed this sentiment.

“We’ve done a ton of SAG projects over the years [prior to working in microseries],” Edward Tommasi, principal of Snow Story, told TheWrap. “This was the quickest SAG has ever responded to a submission for a project in a decade of working with them. Submitting this project as a union vertical was the fastest we’ve ever had a rep assigned to it.”

Setting salary, overtime and health care rules

Rather than imposing the rates and requirements associated with larger-budget productions, SAG-AFTRA developed minimum rates intended to reflect what independent vertical producers could reasonably afford while accounting for the additional costs of union employment.

“The rates in our independent agreement are a little different than what you might typically see in our entertainment contract agreements,” SAG-AFTRA’s Johnson said. “We looked around the marketplace and looked at what the budgets could support and were supporting in the nonunion space, and then factored in things like the cost of fringes in order to come up with a rate that the committees felt was acceptable, protective of professional performers … but also met these producers where they were budget-wise.”

The agreement caps production budgets at $300,000 (most microdramas cost between $150,000 and $300,000) and limits shooting schedules to 30 consecutive days. In exchange, producers can access a broader talent pool, including SAG-AFTRA members, while still employing nonunion performers without adopting the terms of a traditional studio production.

Lead performers receive a minimum of $250 for an eight-hour day or $468.75 for a 12-hour day. Performers other than leads receive a minimum of $164 for eight hours or $307.50 for 12 hours. (For reference, the baseline rate for a SAG day player in a television series is $1,246, according to the union’s 2026 television agreement.)

Overtime, meanwhile, applies after eight hours, at 1.5 times the applicable rate for hours nine and 10 and double time for hours 11 and beyond. Many microdramas’ sets in the early days received criticism for long hours and a lack of overtime pay.

For casting directors Howard Meltzer and Tim Pratt, who have worked with vertical production partner Knockout Shorts, they have a stump speech ready when they pitch to agents to book their clients on vertical projects.

“Agents are always going to ask for more money. Even if you come to them with an extremely handsome offer … That’s what they do,” Meltzer said. “My stump speech: ‘The budgets have to be $300,000 and under. We can’t exceed that. I would never want to insult you, town representative, or your client by something that feels lowball. But these are the constraints of the contract.’”

Meltzer, a casting director who had a hand in discovering several Disney Channel stars (notably Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato) in the 2000s and 2010s, added that agents have become receptive to this industry and understand its limitations and opportunities. 

The structure has not eliminated the need to negotiate individual deals. Knockout Shorts co-founder Chris Crema said vertical leads can still command rates above the agreement’s minimums, depending on the performer and production. Crema noted that oftentimes his company exceeds SAG’s salary minimums in its initial offers.

Microdramas actor JT Garcia told TheWrap earlier this year that when he started acting in ReelShort productions he made $600 a day, but now gets over $1,200 per day plus 20% as his standard rate.

One sticking point for some of the microdrama platforms that came from the Chinese markets was SAG’s Pension and Health Fund. The health insurance measure is pretty standard for most television and film contracts, but for the largely nonunion industry, this was a significant ask. 

Production companies under SAG agreements are responsible for paying pension and health contributions for every performer, regardless of union status. Those contributions are paid by the producer on top of the performer’s salary, rather than deducted from the performer’s paycheck. The arrangement allows performers to begin accruing benefits through SAG-affiliated employment, even if they have not yet joined the union.

The agreement also provides a potential pathway to union membership. According to SAG-AFTRA, a nonmember who works one principal role on a covered vertical production can use the employment to seek membership if they are ready to join.

There are benefits to remaining nonunion as a microdrama actor, though, to continue to make a living before entering the more competitive union market. The agreement does not automatically force nonmembers to join after working on a covered production, allowing producers to cast a mix of union and nonunion performers. 

“It’s a different consideration than when you consider a multi-million dollar movie,” Johnson said of the vertical space. “But we want to make sure that even at a low budget, the corners aren’t being cut on things like safety and nudity and simulated sex and AI.”

Genre push attracts traditional talent

For much of the vertical microdrama boom, romance has been the dominant genre, with serialized stories designed around cliffhangers, heightened emotional stakes and quick-turning episodes. But producers and casting professionals say the format’s expansion into other kinds of storytelling combined with the SAG agreement is making it more appealing to established Hollywood talent.

“One of the big barriers has been … ‘I don’t know if I want to do this romance novel stuff,’” Snow Story producer Austin Herring said. “But now that it is expanding outside of just one genre, I think that it is a lot more appealing to SAG and to those top-tier talent.”

Herring and his producing partner Tommasi have worked on SAG verticals with aTwist and BET, and talent and their reps have increasingly reached out to them with interest to explore the format.

ATwist tapped “Modern Family” star Jesse Tyler Ferguson to produce a new musical comedy microseries, “Theater Kids vs. Zombies,” which premiered Thursday. Earlier this year, Scott Brown’s Second Rodeo pop star microseries, “Playback,” was one of the first SAG microseries productions available to watch.

The format allows for work within genre at a lower price point, letting producers, writers and actors play without such high stakes.

“It’s a great incubator for talent, incubator for concepts. I wasn’t really in casting during this time, but apparently there were things called pilot presentations back in the day,” Pratt joked. “It’s almost like something like that, a proof of concept.”

The casting director hinted that the agreement has allowed him to bring together stage actors, film and television performers, influencers and reality television personalities on an upcoming musical project.

Pratt added that working with union talent has allowed him to push beyond the pool of vertical actors that have been employed by the Chinese platforms – an often homogenous group of white, attractive performers. 

“They use a lot of the same actors on some of these most successful platforms, and we love a lot of those actors,” Pratt said. “But also, a lot of those actors look the same. So we’ve also really pushed for … let’s break some of the tropes of vertical casting and cast different types of people.”

He and Meltzer have worked on projects including “Love Lies and Frank” for Shortical, which paired James Franco (the first Academy Award winner to star in a microseries) with established vertical stars and other SAG-AFTRA performers. They also pointed to “Swolemates,” a Webtoon project that they described as creatively distinct from much of the existing vertical landscape.

Vertical stars v. union members

As verticals attract more traditional talent, the industry is also confronting a question about what makes a performer valuable in the format: established name recognition or a built-in audience that already follows vertical storytelling.

Producers say the two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, pairing a performer with a dedicated vertical following with a recognizable film or television actor on a SAG production could help reach audiences across different corners of the entertainment business.

“The type of people that care about that vertical audience … it’s more of a cult following,” Herring said. “If Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s blending somebody with a cult following and somebody with a more traditional following is a recipe for success.”

That approach is shaping casting conversations as producers look to establish verticals as a viable destination for talent beyond the performers who have already become familiar faces on mobile-first platforms.

Knockout Shorts, for example, has approached vertical production through a more traditional casting process, developing stories and characters before pitching roles to talent representatives. The company said its existing relationships helped bring Franco onto a project, while the union agreement gave it a framework for working with both traditional actors and performers who helped build the vertical audience.

“Doing things kind of by the book was very appealing for us, just because this space is full of unknowns,” Knockout’s Crema said. “We thought that the best way to get talent to buy into the new space was also show them that the process is very similar to typical filmmaking.”

That familiarity can help ease concerns among agents and managers who may still be skeptical of the format. Pratt said the casting process initially required more outreach to representatives than traditional projects, but he has seen that become easier as more union verticals are produced.

“The SAG of it all … legitimizes it to the talent reps,” he said.

The vertical actors, meanwhile, will make dozens of projects a year, often on the same platform. They build a dedicated following that will watch their content wherever they end up. Sometimes that audience can be more valuable than a traditional entertainment star, whose fans have not yet embraced the new format.

Meltzer said that he believes stunt casting vertical stars in traditional television and film projects is on the near horizon. Earlier this year, Noah Fearnley made the leap from ReelShort star to the television screen with “Love Story.” He will also appear in Ryan Murphy’s “All’s Fair” Season 2 set to premiere later this year.

That’s when those SAG credentials come in handy.

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