Since launching in March, the startup Vurt has gone from 10,000 users to 675,000. Its next bet is that fans of its vertical microdramas want to watch them on the biggest screen in the house, even with black bars on both sides.
Most of the industry is moving the opposite way. Nearly every major streaming service, from Disney Plus to HBO Max, is experimenting with ways to push vertical content onto phones, largely because TikTok and Instagram look like existential threats. Vurt is aiming for the living room TV instead.
Users asked for the TV apps
Vurt has just released dedicated apps for Apple TV and Android TV, which offer 3,500 episodes spread across more than 100 shows. Because most vertical microdrama platforms are still designed around phones, the TV apps make Vurt an outlier.
According to Hilmon Sorey, a Vurt cofounder and angel investor, the push came from users. They wanted to move the verticals they already watched on their phones onto bigger screens. Vurt’s developers concluded that casting alone wouldn’t do.
“At first, we first developed the ability for folks to cast to smart TVs,” Sorey said. The team then judged that casting “wasn’t the best experience,” he explained, since large-screen devices could support “features like HD / 4K video, and the ability to do really high-quality audio.”
Sorey said people using the TV apps have increased their overall engagement time. The probable reason is less flattering than it sounds: viewers can keep watching without reaching for their phones.
Same soap, fewer coin shops
Content-wise, Vurt doesn’t stray far from the formula that made DramaBox and ReelShort popular. Its shows are soapy, melodramatic microdramas. What sets it apart is how the series are produced and how they’re funded.
While DramaBox and ReelShort have filled up with AI-generated slop, most of Vurt’s series rely on human casts and crews. Vurt also earns its revenue through ad partnerships, which means everything is free to watch, with none of the convoluted microtransactions its rivals depend on.
Sorey was blunt about that model. “If you are a platform that’s doing your own original content and you don’t have creators to pay, then ‘give us $20 and we’ll give you 500 coffee beans’ kind of gamification is intentional,” Sorey said. He described it as “a ruse that they can use to boggle your mind because they control that entire content” pipeline.
In his view, Vurt’s “free-to-finish” approach is the company’s main way of being fair to viewers. It’s a principle, but it’s also a business decision: with an ad-supported service, you pay with your attention rather than your card.
Creators get half
Vurt fills its library through licensing deals with production studios and creators, who receive a 50/50 revenue split. Independent creators can pitch projects directly, and once approved, a project can be streaming within a few days.
Sorey said treating creators fairly and taking cues from them are central to how Vurt works. Before the TV apps launched, the company asked creators how they prefer to watch films and TV. Many answered that they favor theaters or big screens because those feel immersive.
Those same creators maintained that microdramas can be just as engaging on a phone with earbuds in or on a TV. Sorey agreed, saying viewers “can have a different kind of immersive experience” with vertical format on a wide screen “because verticals tell their stories in a very different way.”
“You’ve got to have your hook to begin and at the tail end of that, you’ve got to thrust them into the next episode by virtue of a cliffhanger,” Sorey said.
The format is the point
Sorey contends that the hallmarks of microdramas, namely formulaic plots, questionable acting and very short episodes, make them a distinct form of entertainment apart from traditional TV and film. Those traits are exactly why many people consider vertical content unwatchable, yet they also appear to be what keeps Vurt’s audience returning.
Vurt isn’t the only one trying to break away from the phone. In June, Instagram expanded its TV app to include Reels, disappearing Stories and horizontal videos, changes that looked like efforts to keep pace with YouTube. Vurt said it will stay focused on vertical content while it develops original series and livestreamed sporting events.
Who this is for
If you’re already hooked on microdramas and fed up with buying coin bundles just to finish a season, Vurt’s free TV apps are an easy thing to try tonight on your Apple TV or Android TV box. It’s much less clear whether anyone else wants to watch a narrow strip of video flanked by empty space on a 65-inch screen. Still, with nearly every platform turning into an endless vertical feed, Vurt may be on to something.