“The number of Chinese-made micro dramas surged in the first three months of this year to 128,000, according to the China Netcasting Services Assn. More than 95% of them were made with AI.”
A hundred twenty-eight thousand of anything in three months is not an industry, it is a firehose. The number that should worry people is the $500,000 for a 90-minute feature, because that is below what a studio spends on marketing for a single title. Nobody is claiming this stuff is good. It does not need to be good. It needs to be cheaper than the alternative and long enough to fill a commute.