The once-bustling film sets in Hengdian now have only a scattering of production crews left. More than a hundred kilometers away in Hangzhou, AI micro-drama companies are producing about twenty episodes of content per person per day. For the best-performing micro-drama projects, every one yuan invested in production costs can leverage commercial returns of up to one hundred.
In the same industry, one is cooling down, while the other is booming.
What exactly is the Chinese micro-drama industry going through?
Before the Spring Festival, the team of film and television producer Wang Lei could launch three live-action micro-drama projects per month, with a fully packed schedule. He had originally planned to continue expanding his team after the Festival.
However, after the Festival, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse. "From after the Spring Festival until April, there were no projects; all the platforms were adjusting."
Wang took DotDotNews reporters to a filming location in Hengdian. According to him, at peak times, there were more than ten or twenty production crews filming here at the same time, shooting production companies and the homes of domineering CEOs. However, on the day of the interview, reporters saw only one crew at work in the two-story building.
During the 2026 Spring Festival, the capabilities of AI models happened to cross a commercialization threshold, enabling a large number of micro-dramas shot with AI to be brought to market and achieve relatively good commercial returns.
"It's just that time, speed, cost, and commercial feasibility all became viable, so you see an explosive surge in the industry," said Zhou Yuan, founder and CEO of Content Republic.
Whether to transform, and how to transform, has become a choice every practitioner has to face.
In the raging technological revolution, another question has been brought to the forefront: Can AI really replace real people?
The first to face the replacement crisis are actors. During the summer vacation of 2026, the AI micro-drama "The Laid-Off Girl" went viral, with cumulative views exceeding 200 million. The AI female lead, Fang Taozi, now has more than 550,000 Douyin followers. According to media reports, her advertising endorsement fee is as high as 200,000 yuan. AI actors seem to have been accepted by audiences and the market.
Hong Kong actor Otto Chan, who debuted about 20 years ago and has developed his career in the north in recent years, believes that "a stroke of genius comes from 'mistakes.'"
He told reporters that a sudden situation, or an actor's impromptu "small slip" departing from the script, could in his view become an unreplicable classic scene in a film or television work, which is precisely the part that AI currently finds difficult to simulate.
Of course, he also admits that AI micro-dramas are a major trend. As an actor, one needs to embrace AI, at least know what it is, and at least not perform worse than AI. Under the impact of AI, all the students in Chan's acting training class at the same time have also left.
"This industry is one that does not retain people. Whether you will persist or not is different for everyone. Whether you will do it depends on whether you love this industry."
At a time when technology is rapidly iterating, what kind of practitioners does the film and television industry need?
Terry Lam, dean of the School of Film and Television at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, told reporters that the industry used to need T-shaped talents, but now it needs "π-shaped" talents even more—that is, a combination of two Ts, requiring both professional accumulation in one's original field and mastery of AI-related skills.
According to Lam, the arrival of new technology will not give birth to a batch of entirely new practitioners overnight; there will be a process of skill and knowledge transfer, and people need to occupy a position in the AI workflow.
Hengdian has gone from bustling to desolate. Profound changes are taking place in the industry, and such changes are no longer confined to China itself.
What new challenges do micro-dramas from China, especially AI micro-dramas, face overseas? In the next episode, we will hear the story of "micro-dramas going global."
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