At the Shanghai Micro-Short Drama Conference on March 20, Shanghai Qimao Culture Media Co., Ltd. announced that it would accelerate its layout in the micro-short drama field.
Han Hongchang, founder and president of Qimao, announced that the establishment of a new Shanghai short drama company will be completed and the "Qimao Short Drama App" will be launched by the end of March. This year, at least 150 million yuan will be invested in the creation of micro-short dramas, and a "script collection plan" will be launched. A prize pool of millions of yuan will be established, and creators are sincerely invited to jointly incubate Qimao's popular novels into high-quality scripts.
At the same time, The Paper released the "100 Plays Co-creation" brand project for high-quality short dramas at the conference, announcing that it would join forces with seven short drama industry partners to set up a 60 million yuan startup fund pool to incubate 100 short dramas with diverse themes and excellent productions within three years. Qimao is also one of the project's partners.
Han Hongchang (center), founder and president of Qimao
Focus on short dramas: selection of high-quality IP and support for the entire industry chain
According to reports, in order to improve the quality of content creation, Qimao is building its own short drama screenwriter and editorial team, absorbing industry elites to form the core competitiveness of short drama content. Qimao will collect short drama scripts from the entire network, invite outstanding screenwriter studios and individuals to join the creation, and provide a high minimum contract amount and profit sharing ratio.
Qimao has rich digital reading resources, which provides a unique advantage for its entry into the short drama field. Based on its free reading platform "Qimao Free Novel App" and paid reading product "Zongheng Novel App", Qimao has accumulated a large amount of user data. These data will become the basis for the screening of high-quality short drama content: Qimao uses manual preliminary screening combined with user preferences and market trends to accurately select the most suitable novel IPs for adaptation into short dramas. These measures not only create a creative ecology for screenwriters, but also ensure the output of high-quality scripts, laying the foundation for the diversification and high quality of short drama content in the future.
From selling to making, building IP derivative value
In recent years, Qimao has achieved preliminary development of short drama content through copyright sales. Starting from 2025, Qimao will give priority to developing the copyright of original novel short dramas. This transformation aims to maximize the derivative value of IP, enhance the influence of short dramas, and further consolidate Qimao's leading position in the industry.
It is reported that this year Qimao will focus on developing the copyright of original novels on the platform, and by tapping into the potential of original content, enhance the ability of IP to develop across industries and build a powerful content ecosystem.
Cultural Outbound: TapRead+ Short Drama Layout
At the global level, Qimao has also been at the forefront of the industry. Since registering a US company in 2017, Qimao has actively promoted the "culture going overseas" strategy. Its overseas online literature product TapRead was successfully launched in 2018, and in 2024, the newly revised TapRead App and web version have been rolled out on a large scale, covering the North American, European, Middle Eastern and East Asian markets. So far, TapRead has launched more than 1,000 overseas novels, with a total download volume of more than 1 million and a rating of 4.5 stars.
In the field of short plays, Qimao has also proposed a clear strategy for going global: with content as the core, it will adapt high-quality novels into overseas short plays, or translate and launch international versions of already produced high-quality short plays. Qimao hopes to spread Chinese culture more widely around the world with original content and short plays.
Technology-driven: AI creation and audience-generated short plays
At the same time, based on the development of artificial intelligence technology, Qimao is actively exploring the application of AI in the field of online literature and short plays, providing creators and audiences with more efficient and customized content services. Starting from 2023, Qimao will be connected to Baidu's "Wenxin Yiyan" model, and AI writing functions will be launched in its writer area and Qimao Writer Assistant App. These functions include "AI naming", "AI setting" and inspiration generation, providing practical technical support for authors' creation.
The application of AI technology in short drama production is also worth looking forward to. At present, Qimao is exploring the combination of AI for automatic script generation, AI automatic script review, and short drama shot generation. In the future, the integrated production process based on AI technology will greatly improve the efficiency of short drama production, and the integrated production model will also become an important direction of industry innovation.
With the upcoming launch of the "Qimao Short Drama App", Qimao's refined services for user needs will also be upgraded simultaneously. Based on the ever-changing user demands, in the future we can explore the use of artificial intelligence to create short dramas, further expand content sources, and meet diversified user needs.
The person in charge of Qimao's short drama business believes that the development of artificial intelligence technology, the trend of cultural exports, and the vigorous development of the short drama industry have provided Qimao with ample development opportunities. Qimao hopes to develop together with industry partners through its own exploration and innovation, and at the same time spread more excellent content to every corner of the world.
