Filming a short drama about zombies and spiritual beasts—the first thing that changes (or gets cut) is the budget spreadsheet.

Mon, 04 May 2026 13:57:52 +0800

The most interesting thing about AI short dramas is not that they can immediately replace live-action short dramas, but that they turn genres that were previously considered “too risky to bet on” into viable subjects for experimentation.

Zombies, armies, spirit beasts, fantasy—these elements are incredibly difficult to execute in traditional live-action short dramas. It’s not a failure of screenwriting; it’s that every single step requires funding: extras, costumes and makeup, sets, special effects, staging/choreography, safety measures, and post-production. Furthermore, the commercial logic of short dramas demands speed, low cost, and high-frequency uploads. The greater the imaginative scope of a theme, the easier it is for costs to spiral out of control.

AI first revised this budget sheet. It doesn’t guarantee that every shot will be high-end, but it manages to constrain elements that previously required building sets, hiring massive crews, or doing elaborate special effects, down to a feasible/experimental scope. Zombies no longer need to organize 100 extras; mythical creatures don’t automatically drain a cinematic-level VFX budget; and army scenes don’t necessarily have to start with costumes and locations.

In the era of live-action short dramas, many genres aren’t that no one wants to film them; rather, producers are simply afraid to start filming.

If you want to film an army scene, you must first address where the personnel come from, how to stage the environments, and how to manage the vehicles and explosions. Filming zombies requires dealing with makeup effects, chases, crowd scenes, and special effects. Filming mythical beasts or high fantasy is even more complicated because it is difficult to verify preliminary elements like “what exactly does this thing look like, and will its movement be believable?” on a low budget.

So, in the past, many projects died very early on. They weren’t killed during broadcast, nor were they rejected by audience feedback; they died at the production table. Before we even entered proper creative discussions, the budget would already shut it down and tell you to stop dreaming.

What AI first contributed to short-form dramas was establishing this threshold. It’s not about how much it elevated the aesthetic ceiling of these dramas; rather, it is pulling a batch of themes that were originally deemed “unworthy of even attempting” back into a workable range—a scope where projects can be approved, prototypes can be built, and mistakes can be repeatedly made and corrected.

Why are these particular subjects popping up first?

This also explains a very intuitive phenomenon: The AI short dramas that initially appeared frequently were not office romance, family melodrama, nor were they the most cost-effective urban dialogue pieces, but rather genres like mythology, fantasy, adventure, and science fiction—elements that are inherently difficult to film practically.

The reasons are straightforward. For genres that are highly realistic, light on dramatic scenarios, and rely heavily on actors’ performance and the texture of life, the advantages AI currently offers are less direct. However, once a genre relies heavily on world-building, monsters, mythical creatures, large-scale set pieces, and non-realistic environments, the value of AI immediately becomes very tangible.

It first made the process of “imagining it out” much easier (or cheaper).

In content formats like short dramas—which are inherently highly sensitive to economic cycles, funding constraints, and risk tolerance—the party that lowers the cost of visualizing imagination first will be the first one to bring concepts and genres previously deemed unproducible onto the screen.

What Does Public Case Proof / Demonstrate

Based on public case studies, this line/trend has been very consistent.

On 2024-07-08, Kuaishou premiered The Legend of the Mountains and Seas’ Miraculous Mirror: Cleaving Waves and Cutting Waves, described as “China’s first original AIGC fantasy micro-short drama,” at the WAIC forum. This action itself is highly representative. What AI approached initially was not a low-cost reality genre, but rather a fantasy micro-short drama that requires strong world-building and visual effects support.

The AI short drama Journey to the West, launching on 2025-01-01, has switched its setting to Chinese mythology. Scenes like Flower Fruit Mountain, Water Curtain Cave, and Dragon Palace are inherently difficult to film practically with a small budget. What AI provides here is not just “the ability to generate images,” but rather the capability to create deliverable visuals for these scenes at a low cost first.

By 2025-02-24, The Mystery of Majia Cave’s Divine Staff Code shifted its theme to prehistoric tribes, archaeological fantasy, and totem narratives. A very crucial detail in the Science and Technology Daily report is that the team did not simply let AI generate random content; instead, they fed it research reports, 3D scans, and ancient texts, allowing it to make inferences within archaeological boundaries. In other words, AI is not merely cheap; it has transformed themes that previously required extremely high verification costs into an iterative production process.

Looking back, when CCTV.com reported on the premiere of “New World Loading” on 2025-06-26, it was no longer restricted to a single fantasy genre. Instead, it combined 7 unit dramas encompassing science fiction, fantasy, absurd comedy, history, and more. This signal is more important than any single case because it demonstrates that AI short dramas are moving beyond occasionally shooting supernatural mystery content; they are beginning to treat diverse genres, large worldviews, and style transitions as a continuously scalable production model.

What Appears to Be a Technical Gap Is Actually About Deliverability

Viewing only these cases, it is easy to misunderstand that “AI helps save everyone money on special effects.” The issue/scope is much wider than that.

By 2026-02-05, when Kuaishou released Kailin 3.0, the official focus was heavily placed on narrative control, consistency, videos of up to 15 seconds, and multi-character/multi-language native audio. When applied to short drama production, these terms translate into plain language as: Are the characters consistent (looking like the same person throughout)? Can the shots connect smoothly? Will the plot remain cohesive? And will scene transitions be jarring or structurally flawed?

This shows that AI short dramas are no longer just solving the problem of “whether it can be drawn first,” but are approaching “whether it can be connected like a finished deliverable product.”

On 2026-04-15, a Kuaishou executive publicly mentioned that Keling has reduced the cost of micro short dramas to less than one third of traditional models, and shortened the cycle by over 60%. I am more inclined to view this metric as an industry anchor point released by the platform side, rather than a general number applicable to the entire industry. However, it at least demonstrates one thing: that production methods are changing, and thematic boundaries will change accordingly.

When production shifts from “assessing resource sufficiency” to “evaluating conceptual potential,” those who will benefit first will certainly not be the most realistic genres, but rather those that require immense budgets—genres that are easiest to get killed by budget constraints.

Where are the remaining boundaries/limitations?

Of course, this does not mean that AI short dramas have replaced live-action human dramas.

It merely shifted the hurdle from mere feasibility (“whether it can be shot”) to narrative quality (“whether it is well-told”). Generating a spirit beast does not mean you automatically have a coherent Xuanhuan short drama; creating a war scene alone does not automatically establish character relationships, emotional pacing, or rhythmic control.

Many AI short dramas, even now, look more like “high-concept premise trailers” than complete narratives. They prove that the freedom to explore diverse themes has been released, not that their narrative competence has been adequately filled in.

So my judgment on this matter remains the same, though I’ve refined it since the previous draft: what AI did first for the short drama genre was not an aesthetic revolution, but rather putting a batch of previously scrapped concepts—those rejected due to perceived budget limitations—back onto the project proposal table.

Zombie, military, spirit beast fantasy are just the most obvious examples. There will be many more things later that shouldn’t appear in low-budget short dramas, which were brought into the test shooting area by AI. But what truly determines whether these genres can remain is still the script, pacing, and characters, not merely “finally being able to make it.”

References

Writing Notes

Original Prompt

AI short dramas have significantly expanded the themes of the short drama market: zombies, military, spiritual beast fantasy. Previously, live-action short dramas in these genres had production costs that were difficult to control. Using AI for this perfectly aligns with the needs of the industry.

Based on the original prompt above, this piece establishes its core theme, material density, and structure following the methodology of the first draft. The date field uses the original publication time, and all other content serves only the scope committed to by the current article.

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