Illustration by Neil Jamieson It’s the start of a brutally hot day in Southern California and a makeup professional is spritzing actor Carter Harvey’s hair to mimic sweat. According to the project’s script, his character, Clay, has just stormed out of an illegal underground fight, which is why the artist is also carefully painting artful bruises on his body. “Can we get more sweat on his back?” asks the director, Jessie Barr.
Harvey’s scene partner is actress Olivia Rose Williams, who plays a spoiled high school popular girl seeking a personal bodyguard to shield her from a persistent ex. Discovering her hot classmate has the moves of Brad Pitt in Fight Club is a convenient development. In between takes, Barr — a tall woman with a mop of short blond hair and a seemingly boundless enthusiasm for romance stories — reminds the two actors of the vibe she’s going for. “It’s Katherina and Petruchio,” she says, referencing The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare’s tale of a turbulent romance.
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Williams demonstrates her dedication to her craft by jumping up and down with Harvey before at least one take to get the heaving chests the drama requires, even as she’s wearing a restrictive getup of kitten heels, a miniskirt and a shirt with a corset aesthetic. During the scene, the actors stand close, staring into each other’s eyes, as Williams threatens to reveal her classmate’s illegal fighting habit to authorities unless he agrees to protect her: “You want me to keep quiet? Either you be my personal guard dog or I turn you in,” she snarls. “What sounds better: guard dog or prison bitch?”
“Katherina and Petruchio! Meryl and Raul Julia!” Barr reminds her cast.
Welcome to one of the few booming production spaces in Los Angeles in 2026: the colorful and lusty world of microdramas.This cast and crew is shootingFight Dirty, the latest title from a San Francisco-based romance verticals app called CandyJar. It’s one of many firms racing to become a go-to destination for these over-the-top, dopamine-triggering stories in the U.S. Marketing their wares on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, microdrama apps tend to offer a certain number of one-minute-ish episodes for free, hoping to persuade viewers to pay for further installments or subscriptions. (Full series typically run one to two hours.)
ReelShort, a top microdrama app, is known for more explicit love scenes than those in CandyJar productions. Courtesy of ReelShort Though individual budgets are small — CandyJar tells me Fight Dirty’s budget is anywhere from $100,000 to $300,000 — some industry analysts project big things from the format. The microdrama industry, an estimated $11 billion global business in 2025, could grow to $14 billion by year’s end, according to research company Omdia. American consumers are spending more time on select microdrama apps than on traditional streaming platforms on mobile, with ReelShort outcompeting Netflix on daily minutes watched and NetShort beating Disney+, per Omdia.
As microdrama companies build their libraries, they’re enlisting Hollywood creatives at the start of their careers or experiencing occupational lulls. Years earlier, these types might have flocked to indie film, reality television or B movies to gain a paycheck and a line on their résumé. But now, with production levels at depressing lows in the L.A. area, many are racking up IMDb credits in this campy training ground, spending long workdays filming on-the-nose dialogue, hungry once-overs andnear-kisses in the process.
As a reporter who focuses on production and labor in L.A., I was intrigued by verticals’ rise and wanted to dive a little deeper, even as the romance genre — which dominates the microdrama space — isn’t necessarily my thing. (A grumpy millennial former English major whose consumption of love stories is generally limited to the occasional reread of the Janes —Austen and Eyre— I roll my eyes at friends when they talk about their romantasy habits.) I didn’t know what to expect from this industry-within-the-industry that is routinely cranking out smutty tales of billionaires, werewolves, vampires and enemies who become lovers.
***
Top verticals star Noah Fearnley headlines Married the Mafioso I Saved and says of the world of microdramas: “It’s like its own Hollywood inside Hollywood.” Courtesy of ReelShort I embed on the third day of the Fight Dirty shoot, when the crew is on location at a 1920s-era mansion in the exclusive Hollywood Dell neighborhood. The stately manor has plenty of space, but all six scenes on the day’s call sheet are being shot in a second-story bedroom. The production will film in other areas of the house at another time. In general, microdramas typically will only shoot in a few locations to keep costs low.
The room has been decked out almost entirely in varying shades of pink, from a blush-colored satin bedspread to hot pink curtains. In part that seems to be in keeping with Williams’ prissy Cher Horowitz-like character, but also a CandyJar executive producer, Kelly Ann Parker, tells me visual texture like color and wallpaper translates well to microdramas, as well as nice floors and ceilings, given the vertical nature of the screen. Barr, the director, is wearing white corduroy pants that feature illustrations of the heads of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes from 1996’s Baz Luhrmann film Romeo + Juliet on each knee.
First up is a scene that sees Williams’ character open up about her absentee mom to Harvey’s bad-boy type. They also nearly kiss — twice, by my count — but she ends up suggestively applying an overnight lip mask instead. The cast and crew will spend nearly the entire day painstakingly filming moments of sexual tension like this, and the stars additionally will shoot a hookup scene with an intimacy coordinator on a closed set in the afternoon.
With about 915,000 global downloads in April, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower, CandyJar is a smaller-size player in the burgeoning bite-size drama space. The top two most downloaded apps in 2025, ReelShort and DramaBox, had 18 million and 11 million, respectively.
CandyJar’s Falling for My Bodyguard stars Joseph Purcell, the son of Prison Break’s Dominic Purcell, who has become a fan-favorite breakout for the platform. Courtesy of CandyJar The company focuses on the bread-and-butter of the microdrama industry at present: romance stories of all stripes. High school love stories, supernatural love stories and “contract marriage” stories — where couples enter into marital agreements for reasons besides love before they inevitably find out they have chemistry — abound on the app. Popular titles include The Bad Boy Wants Me, Falling for My Bodyguard, Luna Graced and Rooming With the Devil. Viewers can watch CandyJar series either in micro- dramas’ classic vertical (portrait) format or in a horizontal (landscape) format. Like other microdrama apps, CandyJar allows viewers to watch full series by paying for subscriptions or by buying “coins” (an online currency system) that allow them to watch individual episodes or packs of episodes.
Though its titles are typical, the app has developed a niche fan base for producing stories that are considered higher quality and less lurid than their competitors’. ReelShort, for instance, allows users to filter stories by tropes including stepsibling romances and “reverse harem” plots, which are exactly what they sound like. CandyJar is more The CW than Jerry Springer. As one Reddit user observed of CandyJar’s oeuvre a year ago, “No over the top slapping, drinks being thrown, bullying … acting was pretty good too.” Though I am not allowed to watch filming of the steamy scene, the script describes a makeout session where “hands roam,” and the script cuts from Harvey carrying Williams to the bed to a postcoital conversation scene. This isn’t hard-core, maybe not even R-rated.
While some viewers express disappointment that CandyJar love scenes tend to be less explicit than those available on rival apps, the company gets points for having stories with at least some emotional resonance. “I love the check-tearing, drink-tossing slapfests, but sometimes I want more substance,” says another fan on Reddit. “I first saw Luna Graced and Private Lessons from outside the app. I knew I had to check the whole catalog.” (Viewers also can watch CandyJar series in a horizontal cut on its live channel on Amazon Prime.)
Vicious Courtesy of ReelShort The app has broken out its own microdrama star — Joseph Purcell, the son of Prison Break actor Dominic Purcell, who has proved to be a real draw for the platform. Another actor on a CandyJar project has crossed over to traditional television — Lexi Minetree, the star of Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming Legally Blonde prequel, Elle — which is still a rare feat even as microdramas have proliferated.
The format offers a tough but valuabletraining ground for actors, says Noah Fearnley, another performer who made the leap from starring in microdramas to landing bigger roles in traditional Hollywood. Fearnley, who says he once shot 55 microdramas in two years, recently played Michael Bergin on FX’s Love Story. On microdramas, “It’s like you’re thrown into this pool and you have to survive,” he says. “You’re not really getting a chance to do anything else. You have 15 pages, they need to shoot it today. The budget’s low, you have to get it done, and no matter what, they’re going to shoot it.”
Compared to traditional film and television work, which unlike most microdramas is typically union scale, pay on these productions starts at the bottom of the barrel. An average starting rate for an unknown actor starring in a vertical is around $400 a day, while familiar faces might make about $750 a day and “superstars” can make more than $1,000 a day, according to sources. As a point of comparison, SAG-AFTRA minimums for principal performers on a theatrical low-budget project are $810 a day.
Fight Dirty is a YA love story, a genre that CandyJar execs have learned performs particularly well on the platform. The company, which is owned by the romance- and fantasy-heavy self-publishing platform Inkitt, selects its stories from among high-performing books on Inkitt’s paid reading app, Galatea. “We’ve been surprised to find how successfully we’ve been able to produce and market YA shows,” CandyJar director of creative development Elana Zeltser says. “We’ve come to realize that what we’re offering people is sort of a fantasyfulfillment, and that often means reliving high school in a more high-stakes, compelling way than maybe you actually got to live it in your real life.”
On set, Barr focuses on small details to ramp up the escapist romance. She tells Harvey to lean in when he touches Williams’ arm in a scene; she instructs the actress to “breathe him in” while they talk. At one point, Barr stops everything to call for a bra to be hung from a doorknob that is visible in a scene. At another point, she guides her actress from behind the camera on how to look in a reaction shot: “Hungry, hungry, hungry, smile, smile!”
Imbuing each scene with the frisson of romance or high drama is key because of the fierce competition that microdramas face from an array of other distractions that viewers could engage in on their personal devices. Notes CandyJar’s in-house editor, Dan Wilken, “If we don’t engage with someone who is on their phone and is one swipe away from a TikTok meme, then they’re not going to watch our story.”
Microdrama companies tend to break through the noise by laying down a breadcrumb trail of decisions, twists and drama for their viewers. A paywall often pops up before a major choice, a turning point (like someone confessing their feelings to another) or a sex scene. Their dark arts seem to be working. On TikTok, some fans confess that they are addicted to these series. “The short stories that TikTok keeps putting in our faces, they have a hold on me,” said one user. “I have subscribed to six different ones so that you don’t have to, and I have ran up a pretty penny. I have been trying to break up with these shows.”
***
Fight Dirty’s director, Jessie Barr (center), counsels star Olivia Rose Williams (right) during a touch-up. Courtesy of CandyJar The pace of Fight Dirty’s production schedule would make any traditional feature producer’s head spin. Like most microdramas, Fight Dirty is non-union, and the production has five days to shoot a 49-minute series. Workdays are long, which isn’t unusual for any film or TV production, but the pace is intense, with nine to 11 pages being shot in a single day. In total, CandyJar’s entire microdrama production process, from the selection of the book set for adaptation to the release of the show on the app, typically takes about four months.
After the day’s intimate scene has been shot and the set has reopened, I can see that the 12½-hour workday is beginning to take its toll on the cast and crew. Back in the bedroom, Barr appears to be giving more intense direction to her actors than she did in the morning. The script isn’t conveying the stakes she wants in an argument scene, so she asks the actors to put even more emotion into their spat. “I think it’s because we’re tired, we’ve done so much today. … Let’s dig deep,” she tells them. “This should feel Romeo and Juliet level.”
The intensity of the schedule is one reason why some crewmembers come to swear off microdramas. But for others trying to make a living in entertainment in 2026, they’re a crucial lifeline. CandyJar launched in 2023, the same year that joint actors and writers strikes ground Hollywood to a halt and left many production workers looking for work. The surge of microdrama production in L.A. arrived at just the right moment, right before shoot days in L.A. hit a historic low (not counting the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic) in 2024 and then again in 2025.
Fight Dirty’s crew features refugees from the shrinking worlds of film and television. That includes CandyJar’s director of physical production Lily Darragh Harty, who worked in health and safety on FX’s Snowfall and MGM’s Creed III. CandyJar editor Wilken once edited on shows from Ryan Murphy, Greg Berlanti and Dean Devlin. Fight Dirty director of photography Matt Burke, who freelanced on music videos, short films and small features, says “the whole industry fell apart and microdramas kind of rescued us.”
Fight Dirty’s director, Barr, also got into microdramas because she needed a job. An NYU Tisch grad who transitioned early in her career from acting to directing, she has over the years racked up indie bona fides, participating in the Sundance Institute Episodic Lab and shooting a small feature (Sophie Jones) that was released in 2021 by Oscilloscope. “I think coming from independent film is crucial,” she says. “I know how to do 10 pages a day and have no money and have the hero house fall through and you have to pivot.”
Barr says that when she read the premise of Fight Dirty, she thought, “Hell yes.” She adds, “This is my dream concept. It’s like romance and fighting.” Courtesy of CandyJar Barr emphasizes that she’s found meaning in the genre, which she believes harks back to the midbudget romantic comedies Hollywood doesn’t make anymore. She believes her audience for YA microdramas consists of millennials with a hankering for bygone stories like 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s the Man and Romeo + Juliet (if you hadn’t noticed, she really likes that one). At the same time, she’s eager to think through how to represent pleasure in verticals from a female point of view, which she says she didn’t see much of as a movie fan growing up.
“I want to show the guy going down on the girl. Safety and trust and consent is so hot. That communicating is so rich,” she says. “Those moments of almost kissing, yes, it’s to create tension, but it’s also a way to create emotional truth.”
***
Carter Harvey (left), who plays a high school student moonlighting as a underground fighter, practices moves for a scene with the stunt coordinator and fight choreographer of Fight Dirty. Courtesy of CandyJar The next day, there’s a major vibe shift as the cast and crew prepare for one of the big set pieces of Fight Dirty: an underground fight scene shot at an industrial warehouse in south L.A. that has been outfitted with a few walls of chain-link fence that will serve as the perimeter of the arena. An array of extras — mostly large, muscle-bound men with tattoos — begins to filter in.
I watch as Harvey and his onscreen opponent, played by an actor with bulging bicepsnamed Haulston Mann, rehearse their moves with a stunt coordinator (female!)and fight instructor. Harvey, a performer from Oklahoma City with three to four years of experience under his belt, has acted in a Christmas movie with Martin Sheen and done some indie work. This is his first microdrama. “This was not something I was intentionally trying to break into, no,” he says of the format. “The opportunity just came across my plate, and the way I approach all roles is the same, whether it’s a microdrama, feature film, a network television show.”
Barr starts by corralling her background actors behind the chain-link walls and coaching them on how to react to the fight. “There are no rules, there are no bounds … it’s like Gladiator,” she tells them. Before long, two makeup artists materialize to spritz fake sweat on Harvey and Mann.
For a romance microdrama, the scene — involving hair-pulling, a headbutt and Mann climbing the chain-link fence and roaring in an apparent testosterone-fueled display of dominance — is unexpectedly brutal. The cinematographer, Burke, circles around the actors with a handheld camera as they wrestle before Harvey puts Mann in a headlock. After Mann breaks out of it, he whales on Harvey until Harvey pins his arm and headbutts him. As they spar, Mann delivers the line, “That’s my kind of party.” Cheesy, yes, but it looks great on the monitors.
At one point, the filming stops long enough for a makeup artist to rush over a coffee cup full of fake blood to Mann that he will spit in Harvey’s face.
Once shots of the fight are in the bag, Barr goes back to the extras to get some coverage. Two background actors are told to get into a fake fight. One extra yells encouragement to the fighters, including, “Drop that pussy!” — a remark that prompts some eyebrow-raises at video village. Maybe a little too authentic.
Harvey and Haulston Mann (right) face off for the series’ surprisingly brutal fight scene, which involved hair-pulling and a headbutt. Courtesy of CandyJar As microdramas have grown in popularity, Hollywood veterans have begun to flock and try their luck at the format. Former studio execs Susan Rovner, Jana Winograde and Lloyd Braun are launching an app featuring horror, anime and romance verticals. Taye Diggs, after starring in his first microdrama with CandyJar, Off Limits and All Mine, is creating his own platform, Microhouse Films. David Oyelowo and Nate Parker are producing verticals with their Mansa studio, and Issa Rae has begun producing them for TikTok and its PineDrama app. Fox Entertainment, Peacock, Google and Range Media Partners also are getting in the game. All of these firms may offer stiff competition to CandyJar as they aim to bring slightly higher-quality standards to the space.
Ben Woods, an analyst at research firm MIDiA, sounds a note of skepticism about the rapid growth of the format. “Google’s push into microdramas gives the whole phenomenon a bubble feel to me,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “Vertical storytelling is here to stay, but many of these microdrama apps will fail and consolidate.” He wonders whether microdrama apps will become a victim of their own success, as the cost of production rises and competition for talent increases.
For a freelance Hollywood workforce that has just experienced the painful end of the Peak TV bubble, the prospect of another boom-and-bust cycle might be terrifying. But employment in the entertainment business has always been risky, and people drawn to it have always been dreamers. “Hop on the train while you can,” says Harvey.
It would take a larger word count than I have to appropriately capture just how cringe some microdramas can be. Then, while reporting this story, I shelled out for an unlimited CandyJar subscription ($19.99 a week — steep!), steeling myself for the experience. In spite of myself, I grew used to the format — its reliance on stereotypes and occasionally god-awful dialogue, for sure. But I found myself having fun.
When Fight Dirty dropped on the platform in May, I thought I knew what to expect. But the series surprised me. It was funnier than others I’d seen. The acting, sharper. The premise of course was preposterous, intentionally if unrealistically lusty. I’m not saying I’m about to become a verticals evangelist, but I had a good time. I may even watch another. And another.
This story appeared in the May 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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