British director Dan Lowenstein, known for vertical dramas such as ReelShort’s Pride and Prejudice, will direct and produce a new, as-yet-untitled British microdrama currently in development with Night Train Media and Spirit Studios.
The project was acknowledged by Echo Rights and Night Train executive Sarah Postlethwaite during a panel discussion at the Tallinn Black Night Festival, reflecting the rapid global uptake of the format and the UK’s potential growing role as a production hub for mobile-native storytelling. Postlethwaite described the film as “one of the first vertical dramas made in Britain”.
Lowenstein, who has directed about 18 vertical miniseries in the past year for companies such as the Chinese-backed US platform Reel Shorts, has already worked with two co-writers to finalize the series outline and breakdown of the first 10 episodes. A TikTok content creator with “4.2 million views” and a “more traditional scripted content comedian.”
“We’re at a point where we can start negotiating with platforms and commissioners and start looking for who will host our show. We’re in the very early stages,” Postlethwaite said. “They all have different models. Some models are commissioned, some are licensed. We’re trying to learn as much as we can and find what’s right. But certainly, it’s new for all of us,” she told industry insiders at the Nordic Hotel Forum.
The news was announced amid a broader discussion on vertical storytelling titled “Vertical Horizons – Does Size Matter?” “Rewiring Serialized Content to Fit Gen Z’s Consuming Habits” is an Industry@Tallinn & Baltic event session that explores how short-form vertical dramas, known for their fast-paced filming and low budgets, are reshaping their story structure, production, and monetization models.
Moderated by Nordisk Film Production’s Marike Muselaers, the panel included Postlethwaite. Gerhard Meyer, co-founder of Seriencamp. American screenwriter and producer Andrew Higton and director Sean Higton. and Czech producer Kristof Safer, founder of the vertical film festival Vertifilms.
Meyer began with a history of the format, tracing its roots from early Snapchat experiments and home screen narratives to the quick, emotion-driven edits inspired by Chinese and Korean creators that now define the format.
The Higton brothers, who created Snapchat’s teen horror series Dead of Night, reflected on their first experience working in the format more than five years ago.
When asked how he developed a visual approach for a mobile-native audience, Sean Higton explained that he simply watched teenagers on public transit with their thumbs hovering, ready to swipe away. That observation shaped their entire approach. He and his brother decided to delete the original script.
“You can’t create a very complex story; it has to be easily understood and suggested.”
The brothers added that Snapchat fully funded the series and provided analytics to keep viewers engaged, right down to user habits. “From emojis to not using capital letters, ‘That’s not what kids do!'”
The panel also examined the economic conditions driving Asia’s fast-growing microdrama market. Episodes are typically divided into at least 60 episodes of two to three minutes each, and viewers pay per episode after the first free batch. Payments will be made in coins, tokens earned through games, advertising and subscriptions, and the model could generate “up to $1 million in revenue per day,” Musseler said, while Safer stressed that Europe needs to pay attention to Asia’s lead.
“I think we underestimate China,” Safer said, noting that the appeal lies in the core story: “It’s not just a silly story, it’s a story about love, honesty, honesty. They have all the messages that we try to convey in our movies. They just do it in a different way.”
Total production costs can be as low as $100,000, and the schedule is equally demanding. “From the moment you see the script to the time it hits the screen, it takes about three to four weeks. 60, 70, 80 minutes of content is shot within five, six, or seven days, or 14 minutes per day,” Safer said.
Looking ahead, Meyer argued that vertical and horizontal storytelling will increasingly influence each other, rather than being siloed. Speaking to Variety after the session, he teased one of the German projects that will debut at Seliencamp next June. The show, titled “Three Minutes,” will see users sign up for the app and be given a random three-minute slot to broadcast to millions of people, forcing them to “think on their feet and do something crazy,” he explained. “The vertical series is the hook to the horizontal series that follows the stories of the main characters. This is such a crazy and brilliant idea!”
The Industry@Tallinn & Baltic event runs until November 21st. The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival concludes on Sunday.
