At Inside Microdramas in Singapore, billed as the first upfront for the vertical video sector, V47 Entertainment, COL Group and VIRTUE Asia unveiled a 2027 slate encompassing scripted and non-scripted titles.
The portfolio includes romance, fantasy and thrillers, as well as talent competitions and reality formats. It includes some of COL Group’s best-performing IPs, successful webtoons and web novels from CJ Group (Shortnapse) that are ready for adaptation into vertical formats, and original IP from V47 Entertainment.
Highlights from the proven IP side include Oops, I Married My Bestie’s Brother! and My Sweetheart’s a Gangster. Korean adaptations include Idol Once Again and The Vanishing Act. The slate was designed to incorporate brands seamlessly.
“For too long, branded entertainment has treated content as promotion: something bought on the media plan that disappears when the campaign ends,” said David Webster, chairman of V47 Entertainment. “This slate is built on a different principle: content as product, designed for attention, not interruption. We’re bringing brands into the writers’ room, not just the media plan, so they can shape the story while it’s still being written and hold a real position in what it becomes. Every property has been built with franchise potential from day one, so a marketing budget stops being a cost and starts building an asset that keeps working long after the campaign.”
Timothy Oh, group global chief marketing officer and general manager of COL Group International, added, “At COL Group, we’ve seen first-hand what makes microdramas resonate with audiences and how compelling stories can travel across markets. We see a real opportunity for brands to go beyond traditional advertising and become part of the entertainment audiences actively choose to watch. By bringing together our genre expertise and international distribution network with the creative strengths of V47 and VIRTUE, we’re helping brands develop original entertainment IP that can build lasting audience connections and grow across platforms and markets.”
The event also saw the launch of Story Engine, an end-to-end operating model leveraging the VIRTUE Asia for cultural strategy, brand integration and content production; V47 Entertainment for entertainment development and investment; and COL Group for genre expertise and distribution.
Lesley John, CEO at VIRTUE Asia, said. “Brands can no longer rely on interrupting culture to get noticed; they need to earn their place in it. Microdramas offer an exciting opportunity, but success depends on understanding the culture, the audience, and the storytelling that makes people want to keep watching. Our role is to bring those worlds together – translating cultural insight into creative integration that feels native to the story and adds value to the audience experience, not just visibility for the brand.”
