Danny Cohen, the founder and CEO of Access Entertainment (the London-based company that has backed many of A24’s biggest hits, from Moonlight and The Witch to Everything Everywhere All at Once and the upcoming Eddington), is quietly exploring investments in the booming vertical micro-drama space, multiple industry sources confirm.
The pivot makes perfect sense on paper. While prestige indie features rarely deliver outsized returns (A24’s highest-grossing film ever, Everything Everywhere, topped out at $143 million worldwide against a $25 million budget), short-form vertical series are printing money at a scale that would make even the most successful arthouse distributor blush.
In China alone, the micro-drama market exploded past $5 billion in 2023 and is projected to hit $10–12 billion by 2027. Platforms like ReelShort, DramaBox, and FlexTV routinely see single 90-second-episode series generate $10–50 million in revenue through aggressive in-app monetization (pay-per-episode unlocks, “diamond” gifting, etc.).
Production costs, meanwhile, remain laughably low: a 100-episode vertical series can be shot in 12–15 days for $300,000–$1.5 million, delivering ROIs that would embarrass most tech startups.
Access Entertainment has so far stuck to its knitting: high-end film and television with partners like A24, Apple, and the BBC. But the math behind micro-dramas is impossible to ignore.
One well-placed source says Cohen has held early talks with several Los Angeles– and London-based teams building English-language vertical-first studios, with an eye toward transplanting A24’s signature blend of auteur weirdness and impeccable craft into 60–120-second bites.
Imagine Ari Aster–directed revenge thrillers where every episode ends on a screaming close-up, or Yorgos Lanthimos–style deadpan absurdism optimized for doom-scrolling.
Pair that aesthetic with Access’s deep pockets and A24’s talent relationships, and you get a potential killer app in a category that has so far been dominated by melodramatic tropes (evil mother-in-law, amnesiac billionaire, werewolf CEO).
The move would mark one of the first serious attempts by a prestige film financier to cross the chasm into the TikTok/Reels/YouTube Shorts ecosystem, not just as a marketing play, but as a primary distribution and revenue strategy. While most
Hollywood players still treat vertical video as a promotional sideshow, Cohen appears ready to bet that the next *Hereditary*-level cultural phenomenon might be born in portrait mode, paid for in $1.99 increments by sleepless viewers at 3 a.m.
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If the deal happens, it could accelerate an already frantic arms race. Chinese giants like Crazy Maple Studio and ByteDance-backed entities are already expanding aggressively into English-language markets. Having a player with A24-level taste and real theatrical pedigree jump in early could dramatically raise the creative ceiling of a format that, until now, has been defined more by quantity than quality.
For now, no paperwork is signed, and Access Entertainment declined to comment. But the signal is clear: when even the people who bankrolled Midsommar and The Zone of Interest start eyeing 90-second werewolf CEO romances, the micro-drama revolution is no longer coming; it’s already here.
