On today’s episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business,” Bogdan Nesvit, co-CEO and co-founder of Holywater Tech, details the explosive growth of the company’s My Drama and My Muse apps, and he details what he sees as the key to making vertical media more mainstream. “Studios and creators are knocking on our doors right now,” Nesvit says.
Nesvit reflects on how quickly the demand for microdramas and related vertical media has grown in the U.S. and Europe in the handful of years that Holywater has been active in vertical media. Last year, Holywater struck a deal with Fox that calls for the partners to produce as many as 200 vertical media series derived from IP drawn from Fox’s vault.
“There is a huge difference between me trying to reach out to studios and producers two years and one year ago when we just started the micro drama space. The first time when me and my co-founder went to Hollywood and started talking to studios and creators, it felt like knocking on the doors without getting any reply out there, even though the people are there behind the door,” Nesvit observes. “Right now, it feels like all the doors are open. And actually the studios and creators are the ones who are knocking on our on our doors. And it’s beautiful because people start to realize that this is not a fad. A lot of things were called a fad like Netflix and YouTube.”
Nesvit addresses a host of questions that are swirling around the vertical media boom from those who work in traditional Hollywood. First and foremost, there is grave concern that the low-budget model around vertical media will encourage the use of low-end generative AI to create weak content. Nesvit acknowledges that the vertical media world has reached a crossroads, especially for newer entities that are competing with AI-fueled apps from China that churn out romance stories at an astounding rate.
“We have a choice either to be comfortable like most of our competitors, especially from China, because they know how to do this really well, to stay comfortable and continue producing 99% of our shows within [the romance] genre, or push the boundaries and expand the audience and start experimenting with other genres,” Nesvit says. “We choose the second way, even though it’s more risky, because we have to invest more in R&D in something that doesn’t work necessarily from the first time, but we believe that we will drive more new audience like this.”
Nesvit points to My Drama’s success with the recent serial based on Fox’s unscripted series of “Farmer Wants a Wife” produced with Fox. “This is the first large IP that was released on vertical platform, and the metrics are amazing. So we’re experimenting with fantasy, with crime, a lot of experimenting with sports shows,” he says. “Romance is still a core driver of our revenue. But at the same time, we see that every time we release new formats and new genres, they expand in our audience.”
“Strictly Business” is Variety’s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. (Please click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.) New episodes debut every Wednesday and can be downloaded at Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud and more.