2026-11-09

Short drama & web fiction brief, Nov 9: China says over 94% of ~550K new microdramas are AI-made; RTL+ samples Inkitt's CandyJar in Germany

China's broadcast regulator chief Cao Shumin said on November 4 that nearly 550,000 microdramas went online in the first ten months of 2026, about 17 times the 2025 total, and that over 94% were AI dramas, Caixin reported on November 5; in the same week Germany's RTL+ began streaming the opening episodes of Inkitt CandyJar romance verticals on November 6 before handing viewers to the CandyJar app, and the rights holder of Korea's The Remarried Empress said the webtoon earned nearly a month's revenue in one day after the Disney+ series premiered. For web novelists and short-drama producers these point to one decision: design work as "free sampler, then paid continuation" and "source, multi-season adaptation, back to source," rather than pricing a single license, while the horror-only streamer TerrorBox signing a pact with Saw writers shows genre shorts now have dedicated buyers. Every figure here is an official statement, a company claim or a third-party chart; we did not see raw data or test any of these approaches.