In October, Singapore will host an unprecedented global event dedicated to Duanju financing

COL Group, the Chinese company that owns ReelShort, the leading duanju outside of China, is partnering with VIRTUE Asia and V47 Entertainment to launch "Inside Microdramas," touted as the first global pre-financing marketplace dedicated to the format. The announcement was made on August 27, 2026, at the ContentAsia summit in Bangkok.

The event will be held in Singapore on October 27, 2026. It will bring together leaders from the entertainment, advertising, technology, platform and brand industries, around the theme "Inside the Business, Culture and Future of Entertainment's Fastest-Growing Format".

The principle is based on that of traditional television markets: bringing producers and advertisers together before production rather than after broadcast, allowing brands to invest in projects from their early stages of development. The program combines roundtables, brand presentations, inter-industry debates, project previews, and one-on-one meetings between potential partners.

COL Group will open the event with a session dedicated to how duanju is pushing studios, platforms, and creators to rethink production, distribution, and viewing in the mobile age. VIRTUE Asia will present on the role of brands in creating narratives, rather than simply funding them.

The organizers explicitly distinguish duanju, a short, serialized narrative format, from vertical entertainment in its broadest sense: fiction, reality, creator-driven content, interactive storytelling, and brands. The event is part of a larger partnership established in June 2026 between V47 Entertainment, VIRTUE Asia, and COL Group to expand brand access to duanju in Southeast Asia.

For Timothy Oh, international managing director of COL Group, duanju is just "the first sign of a much wider change" in the way entertainment is created, financed and consumed.

Until now, brands have primarily entered the duanju market through placements or one-off partnerships, once projects were already underway. This new event offers upstream access, at the development stage, modeled on the advertising model of traditional television.