Google and talent agency Range Media Partners have launched 100 Zeros, a new venture producing "microdramas" — vertical, phone-first series with roughly 60 episodes lasting around a minute each, made on shoestring budgets of about $250,000. High-profile names including Kenan Thompson, director McG and "Bachelor" creator Mike Fleiss are joining the format, seeing it as a way to make passion projects outside traditional studio development, or even as a proving ground for concepts that could later become full television shows or films.

The article contrasts this new wave with Quibi, the ill-fated $1 billion short-form streaming venture from Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman that collapsed within six months of its April 2020 launch and was sold to Roku for just $100 million. Unlike Quibi's costly, ad-free premium model competing against free content on YouTube and TikTok, microdramas take cues from a booming Chinese industry built around cheap, addictive, cliffhanger-driven storytelling designed purely to hook mobile viewers, with backers arguing more modest budgets and expectations make the model sustainable this time.