Quiet on set. How AI transformed China’s microdrama scene

The Basement Sets of Hengdian Are Going Silent

Healfromzero.com – In a dimly lit basement beneath one of the sprawling studio complexes in Hengdian, Zhejiang province, the usual chaos of a production day unfolded: camera operators darted between rigs, choreographers rehearsed fight choreography, and a props crew wrestled with rigging a net meant to trap a captive. Actors clad in assassin garb loitered between takes, lighting cigarettes while freelance stylists patched up their looks. To an outside observer, nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

Yet the energy that once defined these floors was draining. Within a matter of months, the vertical-screen microdrama productions that had saturated Hengdian and other Chinese filming hubs were being displaced by algorithmically generated video. New AI tools now churn out the same punchy, phone-first narratives at a tiny fraction of live-action cost, collapsing demand for physical crews and flooding streaming platforms with synthetic content.

A Numbers-Driven Collapse

Chinese state media reported that more than 120,000 microdramas were released during the first quarter of this year. Of that staggering output, roughly 95 percent was produced by artificial intelligence. The figure underscores how rapidly the creative labor model has been upended: what once required dozens of technicians, performers, and location managers per episode can now be rendered by a small team guiding generative software.

The disruption has made microdrama one of the most visible case studies of how China’s accelerated AI rollout is reshaping employment. Jobs vanish almost as quickly as new roles emerge, leaving workers in a state of prolonged uncertainty about their next paycheck.

Voices from the Shrinking Floor

Between takes on a basement set, a 24-year-old performer known by her stage name Junlin described the squeeze she faces. Dressed in combat boots with a high ponytail, she was preparing to play a lead assassin flanked by a squad of hitmen in an upcoming vertical series.

“With fewer productions hiring, your space for survival is constantly squeezed.”

Her June schedule told the story in stark arithmetic: seven working days, compared with the spring months when she had been on set roughly 25 out of every 30 days across Hengdian and neighboring cities.

“I’m someone who gets anxious easily. If I’m not on set, I would be in a constant state of anxiety.”

Her experience mirrors that of Bi Zhiqiang, a 27-year-old actor who relocated to Hengdian in 2021 as the microdrama wave was cresting. He recalled the flood of roles that followed.

“Once microdramas took off, there was a nonstop stream of roles I could take on as long as I wanted to film. Many people who didn’t even study acting or film and television joined because there were more and more opportunities.”

How Microdramas Took Hold

The format — episodes of roughly 90 seconds stitched into serialized arcs comparable in length to a feature film — was born during the pandemic lockdowns. With cinemas shuttered and audiences glued to short-video apps such as Douyin and Kuaishou, producers discovered a hungry market for bite-sized, vertically oriented storytelling. Plots leaned into melodrama: tyrannical mother-in-laws, case-of-identity twists, wartime valor, and wronged lovers.

The genre proved commercially potent. Market-research firm DataEye valued the domestic microdrama sector at nearly $15 billion last year, almost twice the annual box-office revenue of theatrical feature films in China. The format also crossed borders, spawning a multi-billion-dollar export pipeline and drawing international audiences to content that had previously existed only within Chinese-language app ecosystems.

Hengdian’s Boom and Its Hangover

The town of just over 200,000 residents, nestled in rural eastern Zhejiang, had long been known as “China’s Hollywood” thanks to its decades-old studio complex — home to full-scale replicas of imperial landmarks such as the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City, and the birthplace of numerous domestic blockbusters. The microdrama surge funneled thousands of additional crews into and around Hengdian World Studios last year, injecting fresh economic energy into a town whose identity had been tied to prestige cinema for generations.

Parallel hubs sprouted elsewhere: Qingdao, Xi’an, and Zhengzhou all developed purpose-built complexes with fabricated mansions and period sets tailored to microdrama aesthetics. The geographic spread had made the industry feel resilient — until the AI shift compressed production timelines and costs so dramatically that physical locations lost their economic rationale.

Regulatory Tightrope

Compounding the labor disruption, Beijing’s media regulators are tightening oversight. New rules scheduled to take effect in September will require microdrama plotlines to “adhere to correct political direction,” adding a compliance layer that further raises the cost of producing original, human-written scripts. For an industry already reeling from synthetic competition, the added administrative burden narrows the margin for independent creators even further.

What Comes Next

The Hengdian basement sets are not empty yet, but the tempo has slowed. The question facing thousands of performers, technicians, and support staff is no longer whether AI will enter the creative pipeline — it already has — but whether a viable hybrid model can sustain human labor at scale. For now, the answer remains uncertain, and the quiet spreading across those basement floors carries the weight of an entire workforce’s next season.