British director Dan Löwenstein, known for vertical dramas like ReelShort’s “Pride & Prejudice,” is set to direct and produce a new and as-yet untitled U.K.-made microdrama currently in development with Night Train Media and Spirit Studios.
The project was confirmed by Eccho Rights and Night Train executive Sarah Postlethwaite during a panel at the Tallinn Black Nights Festival reflecting the format’s rapid global rise and Britain’s potentially growing role as a production base for mobile-native storytelling. Postlethwaite described it as “one of the first U.K.-produced vertical dramas.”
Löwenstein, who has directed some 18 vertical mini series in the past year for companies including the Chinese-backed U.S. platform ReelShort, has already put together a series overview and a first 10-episodes breakdown with two co-writers: a TikTok content creator “with 4.2 million views,” and a “more traditional scripted content comedian.”
“We’re getting to a point where we can start going out to platforms and commissioners and try and find who’s going to have our show. We’re at very, very early stages,” said Postlethwaite. “They all have different models: some will commission, others will licence. We’re trying to learn as much as we can and work out what’s right. But, yes, it’s fresh to us all,” she told the industry crowd at the Nordic Hotel Forum.
The news came during a broader discussion on vertical storytelling entitled Vertical Horizons – Does Size Matter? Rewiring Serialized Content to Fit Gen Z’s Consuming Habits, an Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event session exploring how short-form vertical dramas, known for fast-paced shoots and low-budget execution, are reshaping story structure, production and monetization models.
Moderated by Marike Muselaers from Nordisk Film Production, the panel brought together Postlethwaite; Seriencamp co-founder Gerhard Maier; U.S. writer-producer Andrew Higton and director Shaun Higton; and Czech producer Krystof Safer, the founder of vertical film festival Vertifilms.
Maier opened with a rapid history of the format, tracing its roots from early Snapchat experiments and home-screen narratives to the fast-cut, emotion-led edits inspired by Chinese and South Korean creators that now define it.
The Higton brothers, who created Snapchat’s teen horror series “Dead of Night,” reflected on their first experience working in the format more than five years ago.
Asked how he developed a visual approach for mobile-native viewers, Shaun Higton explained that he simply watched teenagers scrolling on public transport, thumbs hovering, ready to swipe away at any second. That observation shaped their entire approach: he and his brother decided to strip down their original script.
“You can’t have a super complicated narrative, it’s got to be easily understood and pitched.”
The brothers added that Snapchat fully financed the series and provided analytics to keep audiences engaged, right down to user habits. “Anything from emojis to not using capital letters – ‘That’s not what kids do!’”
The panel also examined the economics driving Asia’s booming microdrama market. Episodes typically run two-to-three minutes across at least 60 installments, with viewers paying per episode after the first free batch. Payment is made via coins, tokens earned through games or ads or subscriptions – a model can generate “up to a million dollars per day in revenue,” Muselaers noted, prompting Safer to stress that Europe needs to pay attention to Asia’s lead.
“I think we are underestimating China,” Safer said, noting that the appeal lies in stories that “go to the point. It’s not just trash: it’s about love, honesty, truthfulness. They have all the messages that we are trying to deliver in our films, they’re just doing it in a different form.”
Total production costs can be as low as $100,000, and timelines are equally aggressive. “From the moment you see the script ‘til it appears on the screen, there are about three to four weeks… 60, 70, 80 minutes of content, shot within five, six or seven days – that’s 14 minutes a day!” Safer said.
Looking ahead, Maier argued that vertical and horizontal storytelling are increasingly influencing each other rather than siloed. Speaking to Variety after the session, he teased one of the German projects debuting at Seriencamp next June. Titled “Three Minutes,” the show lets users sign up to an app that randomly gives them a three-minute window to broadcast to millions, forcing them “to think on [their] feet and do something crazy,” he explained. “The vertical is a hook into the horizontal series that will follow the story of the protagonists. It’s a super crazy, great idea!”
The Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event runs until Nov. 21. The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival wraps on Sunday.
