It was a pretty wild morning.

In the space of just a few hours, we witnessed a gangland killing, a jewellery heist and stepped onboard a private jet.

We observed a billionaire CEO at work, a dramatic family showdown in a hospital and a drunken karaoke party.

It was all part of a tour around a massive Chinese facility producing what are known as vertical micro-dramas. To describe the experience as somewhat dizzying is an understatement.

If you haven’t heard of them, micro-dramas are a new cultural sensation sweeping not just China but the world, a remarkable example of China’s booming soft power.

They are essentially serialised productions split into episodes of roughly a minute, shot in vertical and viewed solely on smartphones.

Think soap operas for the TikTok generation.

‘Secret surrogate to the Mafia King’

The story lines are sensational and melodramatic with titles that border the ridiculous; ‘Ex-Convict nanny and Billionaire single dad’, ‘Pregnant by my Tough Daddy CEO’ and ‘Secret Surrogate to the Mafia King’, just some examples.

The action is fast and the characters simplistic, while autoplay and multiple mini cliff hangers are designed to provide an addictive dopamine hit.

It’s a format which has sprung to life in just the last few years, developed initially in China in the wake of the pandemic, and its success has been extraordinary.

Some of the most-watched titles have hundreds of millions of views and downloads of short drama apps were over six times higher in the first quarter of 2025 than that same period last year, according to data from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm.

The Chinese government recently revealed that over 50% of all internet users in China have watched a micro-drama, more than have ordered food online or used a ride-hailing service.

‘You can easily binge five or six episodes on the subway commute’

“People’s lives are so stressful and packed these days,” explains Ji Jingdong, a producer of micro-dramas who made the switch from traditional film around three years ago.

“When you watch vertical-screen content, you can easily binge five or six episodes on the subway commute, right? And let’s face it, you’re barely halfway through an ordinary TV episode before you reach your stop.

“Scrolling through vertical screens at a fast pace is actually pretty stress-relieving. Especially those so-called ‘mindless dramas’ – they’re incredibly relaxing to watch.”

That mass appeal, paired with extremely fast turnaround times and no-frills production is translating into massive revenues.

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Last year, the industry revenue was an astonishing $6.9bn, for the first time exceeding the value of the Chinese box office.

Its figure is almost 14 times as high as in 2021, just three years ago.

But with this huge reach and revenues comes both challenge and opportunity for a system like China where everything including cultural products is strictly controlled.

1,200 series taken down

Indeed in February of this year over 1,200 series were taken down, deemed too “vulgar” or inappropriate, while a wave of new regulations now require projects over a certain value to have government approval.

In addition there are initiatives to encourage production houses to make dramas that promote certain values such as ‘Learn the law with Micro-Short Dramas’ and ‘Explore intangible cultural heritage through micro short dramas’.

It’s a framework they are aware of at the Meigao Micro Drama Super Factory, in the southeastern city of Quzhou.

This 67,000 square metre facility was initially constructed as a COVID quarantine hotel, but it now houses around 200 different sets where multiple crews can shoot their dramas simultaneously.

There is almost any indoor environment you could imagine – from a bank, courthouse and subway to a ballroom, office and multiple home environments.

The CEO Dai Wenxue explains with pride how they made 500 micro-dramas last year.

But there is also a clear acknowledgement that the transformation of this venue was achieved with local government support, and that this massive Chinese success story also serves a political purpose.

Aligning with ‘the nation’s overarching strategic vision’

“The early phase emphasised growth, with the government taking a relatively relaxed but not lax approach,” he explains. “Now, the focus has shifted toward premium production, cultural exports and telling compelling Chinese stories.

“This aligns with the nation’s overarching strategic vision. That’s the current landscape.”

Indeed, while the majority of productions are fun and frivolous, for its critics, the industry is a perfect propaganda tool.

This autumn, in fact, saw a huge boom in government-encouraged patriotic war productions to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two and a huge accompanying military parade in Beijing.

All this mattered because the format is now being aggressively exported abroad.

Almost all production houses worth their salt are leaning into English language productions. Meigao is in fact building an entire second location with American-style scenes.

And it’s no wonder when you look at the numbers. According to analysis undertaken by Sensor Tower, in the first quarter of 2025, downloads in the US had gone up 54% compared to the same period in 2024. In Latin America it was 69% and in India a remarkable 113%.

‘A huge uptick’

“So in the past 10 months, right after the Chinese New Year, there was definitely a huge uptick,” says Max Olsen, an American actor living in Beijing. For him and other Western actors there has been a hugely noticeable boom in work .

“A bunch of productions decided that they were going to shoot, you know, they’re going to produce one a week.

“Obviously, with money, with eyeballs, with attention, comes a degree of power.”

There are of course questions about how this type of soft power translates and what China could or would do with it. But it is just one of a number of cultural exports playing into a trend of China positioning itself as accessible and relatable, even ‘cool’.

Indeed for such a new format there is clearly still results yet to be seen.

“I don’t think the double-digit growth will continue forever,” says Olsen.

“But I suspect in five years’ time, we’ll have a very established industry.”

“It’s a cliché,” says Bruce Springsteen, “but he is a rock star – and you can’t fake that.”

The Boss is talking about Jeremy Allen White, star of The Bear, who is now playing him in the upcoming film Deliver Me From Nowhere.

It comes after a flurry of biopics on musical greats in recent years, from Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis to A Complete Unknown and Back To Black, but rather than an all-encompassing look at his epic career, this one focuses on a very specific period of its subject’s life; a raw portrayal of the young Springsteen, on the cusp of even greater success following the release of The River album, but struggling with inner demons and childhood trauma while writing the stark follow-up Nebraska, released in 1982.

Speaking at a Q&A held at Spotify’s London headquarters ahead of the film’s release, Springsteen, 76, said he had watched The Bear and “knew that was the kind of actor” needed – someone who could convey his inner turmoil, as well as play a convincing rock star.

“You either got that or you don’t have it, and he just had the swagger.”

Directed and co-written by Scott Cooper, the film is based on the book of the same name by Warren Zanes, and is the first time Springsteen’s life has been depicted on the big screen.

The star was on board straight away. “I figured, I’m 76 years old, I don’t really care what the f*** I do anymore. As you get older, certainly at my age, you take more risks in your work and in life in general.”

He and White first met at one of his gigs at Wembley Stadium, where Springsteen prepared himself for lots of questions. “I figured this guy is going to be tremendously interested in me.” But White had done his homework, arriving “so prepared that he really asked me very few questions”.

Springsteen was on set regularly, “which I always apologise to [White] for because… it’s gotta be really weird playing the guy with the guy’s stupid ass sitting there.”

Learning five Bruce songs

And White also had to take on the music. When told he would need to sing and play guitar, his jokey response was: “I don’t do those things. Are you sure?” He had about six months and learned on a 1955 Gibson J-200, sent to him by Springsteen, as the closest model to his Nebraska guitar.

“I was getting together with [teacher JD Simo] on Zoom, four or five, six times a week to prepare. And the first time we hopped on, I said, ‘hey, I’m so excited to learn how to play guitar with you’. And he said, ‘we don’t have time to learn how to play the guitar, we have time to learn these five Bruce songs’. So I learned the guitar in a very strange way.”

Springsteen says it “took me a moment” to get used to seeing his story being dramatised, to White playing him. But he was happy.

“I always go, damn, when did I get that good looking?” he jokes. But he says White’s performance was impressive, that he was able to sing songs “that are hard for me to sing, some of them”.

Keeping the sweat going

Mastering the big hits, Born To Run, Born In The USA, was tough, says White. Thinking he would need to keep his heart rate high for his performance scenes, White says he took a weighted rope on set, to skip and “keep my sweat going”. Turns out, it wasn’t necessary. “When you perform Born To Run or Born In The USA, that sweat comes naturally… I did not need to use that rope.”

Part of the film goes back to Springsteen’s childhood, to the house he grew up in. “They did a very, very good job of putting that house back together,” he says. It is the home he visits “in my dreams to this day, at least a couple of times year… so being able to physically walk into what felt like that living space, my grandmother’s house, my grandfather’s house with my parents, we all lived there together. It was quite a miracle and quite wonderful”.

British actor and recent Emmy winner Stephen Graham plays Springsteen’s late father, and the drama delves into their difficult relationship.

Remembering the family struggles

Reliving those experiences was “powerful”, the star says. He watched an early screening with his younger sister, who held his hand throughout. “And at the end she says, isn’t it wonderful that we have this… it honours our family, it honours the memory of the struggles that we went through… To have it on film in the way that it was portrayed, meant a great deal to my sister and myself.”

Springsteen says he hopes people will connect with the film, with this part of his story, the same as the crowds in front of him do every time he walks on stage.

“The E Street Band will be good every night because that’s what we do,” he says. “But how great we’re going to be is up to you… Hopefully there’s an element of transcendence… and hopefully it stays with [the audience] for as long as they need.”

At West London Film Studios – where major productions from Bridget Jones’s Baby to Killing Eve have all filmed – while Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso is currently being shot in one of their 10 sound stages (across two sites), it pains owner Frank Khalid that one of his biggest stages is empty.

But he has a theory as to why – Donald Trump’s social media posts threatening tariffs on films made outside the US.

“Prior to [Trump] posting that we had quite some big major features come to us looking for space,” he says, “and it’s just gone very quiet since he posted… maybe it’s a coincidence, I don’t know, but I believe it has affected us.”

In September, on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote that America’s “movie making business has been stolen….by other countries…like…’candy from a baby’.”

Repeating a threat he’d first made last May, he claimed he’d authorised his government departments to put a “100% tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States”.

For bigger studios, like Pinewood and Elstree, block-booked years in advance by the major movie producers, his words haven’t had any immediate effect.

But, at smaller studios, like Khalid’s, he certainly feels like there’s been a ripple effect.

“We had a letter from one major big American production saying [the tariff] is not possible, [Trump] legally can’t do it… but at the end of the day, he doesn’t have to do it, the damage is done, isn’t it? By him just posting that… the confidence in the market goes down.”

As Jon Wardle, director of the National Film and Television School, explains, the industry has “always been a bit feast or famine, and we’re in a slight lull… it’s not quite the boom of what it was in 2022 after COVID, but probably at that point we were making a few too many projects.”

Wardle says, Trump’s threatened tariffs are certainly likely to make film companies “slightly more nervous” and “dither a bit more” when it comes to signing off on projects a few years down the line.

But he says it’s important to remember that US studios have “invested hugely” in the UK.

“Disney has a 10-year lease at Pinewood, Amazon has a 10-year lease at Shepperton, the investment for those companies is massive. And the other part of this is that it’s not going to be cheaper to make those films in America. In fact, it’ll be more expensive.”

While the UK industry appears to be finding its feet after the knock-on effects of COVID shutdowns and the US writer’s strike, some smaller studios say Trump’s tariff threats are certainly on their radar.

Farnborough International Studios told us that while it has “recently hosted major TV series for companies such as Paramount and Amazon”, it has “seen film bookings and enquiries slowing down since the first sign of imposed tariffs”.

While West Yorkshire’s Production Park said they’d “not seen any slowdown”, a spokesperson for their studios said they are “tracking wider policy changes that could affect us”.

Mr Wardle says: “I think is it’s a good warning to the UK industry. I think the UK needs to take more seriously the commitment to its own homegrown talent. How do you make projects that aren’t funded and paid for by Americans or another nation?”

With little detail for now, few working within the industry can fathom how a tariff would deliver the happy ending of shoots returning to Hollywood that Donald Trump might desire without driving up costs and stifling investment.

“There’s a huge number of questions about how you actually make tariffs work,” Mr Wardle explains. “It seems like a silly example, but production accountants: we train production accountants and nowhere else in the world does… we planted those seeds 20 years ago and we’re now reaping the rewards.

“It’s not going to be cheaper to make those films in America… so they’ll just make less.”

While Number 10 awaits full details of the latest US tariffs and their potential impact on the UK, a government spokesperson said: “Our film industry employs millions of people, generates billions for our economy and showcases British culture globally. We are absolutely committed to ensuring it continues to thrive and create good jobs right across the country.”

Listen below to Trump100 from May where we discuss Trump’s tariff threat:

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The madness of trying to second-guess what the president might mean becomes all too apparent at an event like this year’s London Film Festival.

Mr Wardle explains: “There are films in this festival that were made in Britain and in the US, made physically in terms of the shoot in London, post-produced in Canada, with VFX done in India…. how do you apply tariffs? At what point do you do that?”

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On the red carpet, actor Charles Dance – who stars in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein – questioned Trump’s knowledge of filmmaking.

“I don’t think he is generally known for his own understanding of culture,” he said, “this is a man who wants to concrete over the Rose Garden.”

Rian Johnson, director of the Knives Out franchise, said it was “dark times right now in the States, for a lot of reasons”.

“All we can do is keep making movies we believe in, that matter, that say things to audiences… I think we need more of that so we’ll keep forging ahead as long as we’re able,” he said.