This Startup Is Betting on AI Microdramas to Get More Black Stories in Hollywood

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A zombie virus has overtaken South Los Angeles. Authorities, hoping to contain the outbreak, have decided to barricade the neighborhood, leaving residents to make do on their own. So begins They Left Us to Die, a new microdrama from media company Mansa that runs 30 episodes and is entirely AI-generated.

“The plague was made here, made on us, on purpose,” says Imani Cross, an emergency room nurse desperate for a cure to help her brother DJ, who’s been infected.

On Instagram, the trailer drew mostly favorable reaction when it was released on October 29. A cascade of fire emoji filled the comments section as anticipation mounted. But the following day, as the first episode was set to go live at midnight, new tensions began to stir. Why had Mansa created a show with zero human roles? Weren’t actors David Oyelowo and Nate Parker, the company’s founders, about uplifting artists of color, not erasing them?

“Mansa was one of the first vertical apps that was supposed to support and cultivate black talent, but here they are … another AI sellout,” said one user on Threads. “Why would any self-respecting casting director, producer, or director ever consider hiring Oleyowo again after this?” posted another. Actress Yvette Nicole Brown responded with a single note of disapproval: “*sigh* Mmkay,” she wrote, adding a gif of Viola Davis expressing irritation.

Parker wasn’t surprised by the backlash. “When we hear the words AI, it immediately drives us to the realities of what we are facing and the real lives it’s impacting,” Parker tells WIRED.

The problem is that while Hollywood is desperate for more expansive Black stories, not everyone agrees on the best way to make them happen.

As part of Mansa’s development strategy, the company says it is using AI as a chess piece rather than a replacement for human-centered content. The power comes in leveraging a show like They Left Us to Die as a way to bring more awareness to what Black audiences will support. He describes the approach as “holding the line on our very existence” in an industry that’s consolidating, and being able to “use all the tools that we have at our disposal to make sure we can staff up around shows that get greenlit.”

In the shrinking Hollywood of today, a series about a Black ER nurse fighting off a zombie virus unleashed on her neighborhood by white people would likely struggle to find the backing of a major studio without first having proved its value 10 times over. Mansa’s strategy is to test the appetite of audiences with its AI shows. Parker believes this will demonstrate to studios that there is a demand for those kinds of stories before committing to a live production.

Parker says studio heads are even more reluctant in this climate. But with microdramas, “you get to test a piece of content, not just test it in a way of proof of concept like a short film, but you get to monetize it,” he says. “You get to track data around engagement and see if this is something the audience wants.”

As attention spans shrink, microdramas have sprung up as a preferred portal of entertainment for both studios and young people. They’re vertically shot, minute-long soaps that are produced at a fraction of the cost of a TV show and mirror back the kind of frenzied consumption that has come to define modern entertainment. As streamers like ReelShort and DramaBox dominate the industry, stories anchored around romance, billionaire fantasies, revenge, and supernatural sagas have become the genres driving a boom largely fueled by women viewers.

An Omdia analysis of mobile usage in the fourth quarter of 2025 found that users spent an average of 10 more minutes per day on ReelShort (36 minutes) compared to Prime Video (26 minutes) and Netflix (20 minutes), with the firm predicting that the microdrama market will reach $14 billion in 2027.

Hoorae Media, Issa Rae’s production company, expanded into the sector this year with two microdramas, including Screen Time, a couples thriller comedy that, as of October, had over 580 million views across TikTok and its in-house microdrama app, PineDrama. There are also upstarts Juccee Shorts and Urban Operas, which is launching with six series later this month, that are angling to offer more diverse stories for audiences.

Among Gen Z, watching short-form video is now more common than watching movies, accounting for 26 percent of weekly media time among young adults aged 18 to 24, according to a recent survey by the entertainment analytics firm Luminate.

Streamers are also investing more into the format and have even started to redesign their own user experience to keep pace with Gen Z’s twitchy consumption habits. Between April and August, Peacock, HBO Max, Prime Video, Paramount+, Netflix, and Disney+ all launched a short-form vertical feed on their respective mobile app.

Maria Rua Aguete, global head of media and entertainment at Omdia, suspects that AI will change the economics of the industry. But more cheaply produced content doesn’t automatically mean more viewers. “Ultimately, audiences will decide what succeeds,” she says, adding that there is a “significant opportunity” to tap into overlooked demos.

The backlash in response to They Left Us to Die is a direct symptom of this rapid evolution. “What Nate is trying to do, no matter how practical and logical it is, he’s not reading the room and understanding that people don’t care about that. They just see technology as stealing their opportunities,” says J. Christopher Hamilton, an associate professor of communications at Syracuse and entertainment lawyer.

The reality of Hollywood is dire. The $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance is projected to eliminate up to 4,500 film and television jobs in Los Angeles, according to the county’s Department of Economic Opportunity and Film Office. That reality can feel doubly crushing for Black artists and industry workers because they’re already vastly underrepresented.

The concern in response to They Left Us to Die highlighted the desperation that so many people are feeling around losing opportunities they were already struggling to land. Despite Black, Indigenous, and people of color moviegoers over-indexing as ticket buyers, representing the majority of opening weekend domestic ticket sales, Black actors accounted for only 6.5 percent of movie leads while Black directors made up 3.3 percent of releases in 2025, according to the 2026 UCLA Hollywood Diversity report.

As a distributor “showcasing diaspora-focused content,” Parker wants to prove that there is value in being able to go from an idea to a script to market in a matter of weeks rather than the years it might take through the Hollywood system. Mansa has produced nine live-action microdramas so far, in addition to two that are fully AI-generated. The company declined to share data on how its AI series were performing.

But what Mansa is attempting is also about trust for viewers, some of whom wonder whether Parker is worthy of it. In 1999, Parker was charged and later acquitted of sexual assault while in college. The case resurfaced following the release of The Birth of a Nation, his 2016 film about a slave rebellion led by Nat Turner; it depicted a fictionalized rape scene as motivation for the uprising. “Nate Parker been a pariah,” one person wrote on Threads under the announcement about Mansa’s AI series, as more people poured on.

Whether Mansa succeeds or fails, Hamilton believes AI microdramas are “too compelling a business proposition” for the industry to ignore.

“Real-life actors and storytellers aren’t going away completely, but I do think we’re going to see a resetting of the table, and some people are in denial about that,” Hamilton says. “When it hits, it’s going to be like a blackout. No one’s going to know which way is up.”