FlareFlow & Europe’s Shorts Strike Four-Title Microdrama Pact

EXCLUSIVE: Microdrama platforms FlareFlow and Shorts are sharing the vertical love.

The Singapore-based, COL Group-owned FlareFlow and Europe’s Shorts will team on a four-strong slate that they say will “broaden the landscape of microdrama” by dipping into fantasy-led, action, supernatural and revenge-themed storytelling.

They say the deal “reflects a shared ambition to move vertical entertainment beyond many of the genres and story formulas that have traditionally dominated the category” – a strategy both companies have been exploring over the past year.

The plan is for vertical series that have heightened genre concepts and richer world building, while sticking to the snappy, emotionally intense and hook-led style of many current microdramas.

The slate slate will begin rolling out weekly from this Friday (August 21) on FlareFlow, which is well established as one of the premiere global microdrama platforms, and Shorts, the France-based vertical video service that we profiled as one of several emerging from Europe.

“Vertical drama is entering a new phase, and we believe there is a real opportunity to broaden both the stories being told and the audiences the format can reach,” said Timothy Oh, General Manager of COL Group and Chief Marketing Officer of FlareFlow.

“Through this collaboration with Shorts, we want to push the quality of storytelling and production forward while showing that microdrama can support bigger worlds, more diverse genres and new opportunities for original IP.”

The collab marks Shorts’ first multi-project co-production partnership of its kind, with several original productions together within one coordinated slate. It struck a deal with L.A.’s Fumero Films at the end of last year on a 40-title slate, though this was an exclusive production pact.

AJ Letterel, Product Manager and Executive Producer at Shorts’ pareent Luni, said: “Shorts is thrilled to partner with FlareFlow on a shared conviction: Vertical microdrama is not a smaller version of an older format, but a form entirely its own. When treated with ambition and respect, it has the potential to unlock storytelling we’ve only begun to explore.

“With COL Group, which has helped define this space from the beginning, we’re expanding the Shorts portfolio beyond romance into new genres, bigger stories and deeper worlds.”