Showbox, the South Korean studio behind the 2024 box office juggernaut Exhuma, has signed a co-production deal with the microdrama app ReelShort — the latest sign that Korea’s film establishment is treating vertical drama 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 ReelShort’s existing properties, with original Showbox-developed titles to follow. The content will stream exclusively on ReelShort. The first Korean-made batch — mostly romance fare, with titles like Tell Me Not to Love You, My Secret Lover Is His Brother and Queen Never Cry — suggests that, for now, Showbox is working within microdramas‘ usual pulpy genre conventions.
That a studio of Showbox’s pedigree is making one-to-two-minute melodramas is a notable milestone for the form. One of Korea’s major theatrical distributors, the company is behind some of the country’s biggest films — such as Exhuma, which earned $93 million at the global box office in 2024 — and also produces premium K-drama series, including the Netflix hit A Killer Paradox. Showbox’s involvement holds out the promise of higher-quality K-drama production values for a format widely dismissed as cheaply made and disposable.
And Showbox is not alone — much of Korea’s entertainment establishment has begun exploring the microdrama format over the past year. CJ ENM’s streamer Tving launched a vertical short-form section in 2024, telecom KT’s Studio Genie, previously the conglomerate’s general drama-and-film production arm, refocused on short-form series, and several top-grossing filmmakers — among them Lee Byeong-heon, director of the all-time Korean box office champ Extreme Job — have dabbled in the genre. The number of Korean short-form platforms swelled from around 20 in 2023 to nearly 90 by early 2025, as the industry wagered that Korea could command the higher-quality end of a market so far built on sheer speed and volume.
For Showbox, the move also reflects an attempt at diversification. After Exhuma powered the company to record earnings in 2024, its 2025 film slate misfired, with a string of theatrical flops, while the wider Korean box office has struggled to climb out of its post-pandemic slump. Microdramas — fast and cheap to produce — could offer an appealingly low-cost hedge. Showbox said it would use the ReelShort deal as “a foundation to expand into a wider range of genres and formats.” It made its first move into the format last December, producing two microdramas of its own — among them Bridal Shower: The Missing Bride — and signing distribution deals with the platforms DramaBox and Vigloo. But the ReelShort co-production pact goes a step further, signaling the studio is spreading its bets rather than backing a single platform.
ReelShort — founded in 2022, with a claimed 70 million-plus monthly active users — is widely credited with breaking microdramas into the U.S. market, though it is itself Chinese-backed. Beijing-based COL Group owns 49 percent of ReeShort’s California-based parent company, Crazy Maple Studio.
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