“单集成本1万美元vs百万级用户裂变，中国短剧正在海外验证新的ROI神话”

"The micro-short drama swept Southeast Asia, why did the plot of the boss make foreigners collectively go up?"

When culture transcends mountains and seas, stories take root on the screens of global audiences. Chinese short dramas are breaking into the world with a small but beautiful attitude, with high-energy reversals every minute and emotional resonance across borders, from street restaurants in Southeast Asia to cafes in Los Angeles, so that audiences of all colors are caught in the frenzy of "what will happen in the next episode".

In the current field of film and television, micro-short dramas are sweeping the world with an unstoppable attitude, and their development trends and overseas strategies have also attracted much attention. What does the future hold?

Hurricane: Aggressive attack on overseas markets

2023年中国微短剧市场规模破300亿大关，2024年已达到505亿元，同比增长约35%，首次超过电影票房规模。每天超3000部短剧上线，单部爆款72小时回收成本的行业神话屡见不鲜。抖音、快手等平台构建的“15秒反转+付费解锁”体系，让观众逐渐形成“电子榨菜”依赖症。

成熟的生产模式造就了不少短剧传奇，前有《我在80年代当后妈》展示超强吸金能力，实现破圈传播；后有《家里家外》播放量突破10亿，精品化创作将短剧声浪推向高潮。

市场的火爆也带来了白热化竞争，高强度的内卷让头部企业纷纷将目光投向海外。根据TikTok for Business发布的数据，海外短剧发展势头十分强劲，月均用户数量已达到2000万至4000万。不仅如此，未来海外短剧的潜在规模更是有望突破3亿。

From a regional point of view, emerging markets such as the Middle East and North Africa and Southeast Asia have shown a rapid growth trend, and the Southeast Asian market has become the preferred testing ground due to cultural similarity.

Among many countries, the United States has become the largest "gold absorber" in overseas short dramas with 56.0% of global revenue, and the global rise of TikTok has provided a natural soil for short dramas to go overseas. Japan and Australia also outperformed in terms of income, closely following the United States.

国内短剧市场竞争已经趋于饱和状态，相比之下，海外市场的潜力堪称巨大。将国内成熟的生产模式出海，有望挖掘“2-3亿用户”的增量空间。为此资本加速布局，九州文化、点众科技等公司纷纷在海外设立分公司，与Netflix、YouTube Shorts等国际平台合作，试图将国内成熟的“小说IP-剧本工厂-投流团队”链条复制到全球。

For example, Dianzhong Technology has set up a local screenwriting team in the European and American markets, and the domestic team only provides the story framework, and the specific writing is completed by overseas screenwriters who are familiar with the local culture, so as to ensure that the plot design meets the "emotional threshold" of Western audiences (such as replacing the "face slap counterattack" with "gender equality in the workplace"). Kyushu Culture has set up overseas studios (such as Los Angeles and Berlin) to recruit local directors and actors to form a "creative-production-distribution" localization team.

Challenges: Difficulties are inevitable

尽管短剧出海如火如荼，然而过程却并非一帆风顺。细数近几年新闻，发现其中文化冲突案例并不少见，快手国际版SnackVideo的《修仙大佬在纽约》因“物化女巫群体”遭投诉下架，暴露出东西方价值观碰撞的深层矛盾。某平台将国内爆款《闪婚老公是首富》直译为阿拉伯语版本，因涉及多妻制争议遭中东多国封禁，损失超2000万元。

ReelShort's "Falling for the CEO" provides a successful example, retaining the main line of "contract marriage" while adding gender equality issues in the workplace, with a 47% increase in clicks. However, this kind of transformation is not a panacea, and the sensitivity of the Middle East market to religious themes, and the tolerance of LGBTQ issues in the European and American markets, all require producers to be more cautious in content creation.

The challenge of short dramas going overseas is far more than cultural differences, payment habits are another major problem, domestic audiences have become accustomed to the business model of "the first 20 episodes are free", but the acceptance of Indonesian users is extremely low, and the user churn rate is 0%; Credit card penetration in Latin America is less than 0%, and phone bill charges have become the new payment solution.

成本压力让制作方也陷入“钞能力”困局，如在迪拜拍豪门剧，群演必须是“真”富豪，否则观众能认出假爱马仕；国内短剧爱用“人海战术”，用群演来衬托主角的威风，但这在美国行不通，但欧美演员时薪是横店群演的8倍；中东金主指定要用Flying-Cam航拍。制作方不得不面对“好莱坞式内卷”的现实，精品化趋势让单集成本从不足1万元飙升至数十万元。

Despite this, the potential of short dramas to go overseas is still huge, and under the trend of "high-quality + localization", cultural conflicts may be reduced due to the producer's in-depth study of the cultural background, context and values of the target market, Wang Jiacheng, founder of Kyushu Culture, said, "In terms of language localization, the screenwriting team will enrich the language expression in a targeted manner, so that the dialogue is closer to the character and local cultural atmosphere." Contextual and narrative are also localised to ensure that the Chinese dramatic context is accurately translated into the European and American context, and a single-line narrative with clear motives and characters is used to ensure that the content is close to the local audience. ”

Challenges such as payment habits, cost dilemmas, policies and regulations, and competitive pressure seem to be more difficult issues, and it is still worth thinking about how micro-short drama companies that go overseas can gain a firm foothold in the fiercely competitive market.

The way to break the game: the deep breakthrough of Chinese short dramas

Faced with the triple challenge of cultural differences, payment habits and cost pressures, Chinese short drama producers are exploring ways to break the situation. The tightening of regulatory policies and the upgrading of user needs have forced the industry to shift from "traffic first" to a deep breakthrough of "high-quality + localization".

As a pioneer in the overseas of short dramas, Liu Jinlong, the overseas head of Kyushu Culture, said frankly at the 7 industry summit: "The overseas market is no longer a simple content translation, but requires accurate cultural decoding. In 0, Kyushu and Japan's TV Asahi jointly launched the adaptation of the drama "Big Rich のバツイチ孫niang" (adapted from the domestic hit "After the Divorce I Became the Granddaughter of the World's Richest Man"), through the localization of the cast and the narrative of "the rich man forbears and slaps his face", he has topped the daily list for 0 consecutive times, becoming the first Chinese short drama to enter the mainstream Japanese market.

The application of AI technology also provides new ideas for content localization, and through the AI script generation tool, Hongguo automatically adapts the local online text IP "Son-in-law's Counterattack" to the Middle Eastern version of "King of the Desert", retaining the core of "counterattack" while integrating elements of the chieftain's family struggle, and increasing the paid conversion rate in the UAE market by 35%. At the same time, AI dubbing technology solves the problem of multi-language adaptation, and the multi-language distribution matrix (English, Spanish, Arabic, etc.) meets the love of audiences in different regions for the series.

Wang Jiacheng believes that "short dramas that can truly achieve cultural export will have profound cultural heritage and unique cultural charm, and have universal themes and emotions to overcome language and cultural barriers." ”

Creating scripts according to the preferences of overseas audiences at the moment, from "Made in China" to "Global Adaptation", creating universal emotional themes may be a powerful measure for Chinese short dramas to go overseas in the future. "The Runaway Bride of the Werewolf President" provides a successful model, combining Eastern metaphysics with Western magic, and resonating with universal issues such as "workplace discrimination" and "school bullying". The Korean short drama "Call Now" topped the Netflix global list due to its integration of Chinese short drama elements such as "substitute marriage" and "marriage first and love later", which reversely confirms the cultural universality of the short drama model.

The localization practice of Kyushu culture and the high-quality transformation of Hongguo short dramas have jointly outlined a new map of the globalization of China's digital content. As Liu Jinlong said: "Skits are not cultural dumping, but resonators of the world's emotions." This narrative experiment across languages and regions may redefine the global expression of the "Chinese story".

短剧出海不仅是中国文化输出的新载体，更是中国数字内容产业全球化的重要切口。当《亿万富翁老公的双面人生》与《鱿鱼游戏》在Netflix同台竞技时，我们看到的不仅是文化产业的逆袭，更是一个国家在数字时代重构全球娱乐话语权的野心。短剧出海的未来，或许正如《家里家外》的播放量一样，突破10亿只是起点，真正的星辰大海还在前方。