ReelShort Originals Explained What to Expect

A Kyiv Studio Places Its Wager on the Vertical Drama

TV wasn’t where Holywater got its start. The studio was set up in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2020 by Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov, and its range of products even now looks more like a lab for mobile entertainment than a streaming platform. My Passion covers reelshortwebsite.org books, My Muse handles AI, and FreeBits rounds out the lineup beside My Drama. This breadth is telling, since video is one consumer product among several for the company, not its whole identity. The wager it in the end made was on the vertical drama, a format that started in China as duanju and is shot 9:16 for a phone held vertically. For a small Ukrainian company, this was a gutsy market to enter, as the genre’s leading names were supported by Chinese and Singaporean groups.

The My Drama App Arrives in Spring 2024

In spring 2024, the My Drama app arrived, although the precise date varies with which source you believe. TechCrunch put the launch in April, Google Play gives March 13, 2024, and the App Store shows May 9, 2024. Android seems to have come first, since the difference between those store dates suggests, with the iPhone version following about two months later. The initial slate was heavily built around the genre’s best-loved tropes. The Shy Beauty and the Billionaire Beast and Love Captive to a Mafia Boss were some of the first titles, and the names alone tell you most of what you need to know about the tone. What ultimately distinguished the company was not the stories themselves but the partner it would soon be producing them with.

The Fox Deal, a $22M Round and a Webby

My Drama stopped being a startup curiosity in October 2025. Fox Entertainment took an equity stake in Holywater, and the deal came with a commitment to produce more than 200 vertical titles over two years. Billionaire Blackmail, Bound by Obsession and My Heart’s Offside are some of the Fox-produced titles on the app. Three months later, in January 2026, Holywater closed $22M in a round led by Horizon Capital. The company also has a Webby Award for Best Streaming Service from 2025, a credential it features on its App Store listing. Taken together, those milestones give My Drama something few rivals can match, namely a major American studio serving as both shareholder and producer.

The My Drama Fact Sheet

The condensed version of the story sits in the table below, for readers who only have a minute. It collects in one place the ownership, legal, platform and pricing details that count most to newcomers. The prices are those listed in the US App Store as of September 2026. Country, platform and promotion all change them, so treat them as a rough guide rather than a firm quote. If you ever need to dispute a charge, it matters that the legal entity you deal with depends on where you live. The app shows 5M+ downloads on Google Play, which is the store the install count refers to.

How Watching on My Drama Plays Out

At its heart, the experience is the one the entire category is built on. In this genre, episodes usually last a minute or two before a cliffhanger pushes you toward the next one, and they are vertical, framed for an upright phone. Because series often run anywhere from 20 to 100 episodes, a single story can quietly consume an evening in bite-sized pieces. Where this drama app really sets itself apart is the range of screens it supports. In addition to iPhone, iPad and Android, it is listed for Apple TV on tvOS 18 or later and for Vision Pro. For comparison, ReelShort’s App Store listing shows no Apple TV version at all, so this big-screen option is less common than you might expect. The option converts a solo phone habit into something a couple can watch together, even though a 9:16 frame will never fill a widescreen TV.

As for content, the library mixes Holywater’s own early productions with the growing Fox slate. The genre’s well-worn formula is still the template for the Fox releases, as titles like Billionaire Blackmail and Bound by Obsession make clear. Scale is the fair caveat here. At 5M+ installs on Google Play, the app has a fraction of the 100M+ that ReelShort, DramaBox and ShortMax each list. This gap makes clear where My Drama stands in 2026, as a well-backed challenger rather than the category leader.

Pricing: What My Drama Costs in 2026

The key figure is the weekly pass, one of the three ways Holywater sells access. «My Drama: Full Access» costs roughly $19.99 a week in the US App Store as of September 2026. This puts it level with the weekly passes from ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave and GoodShort, all listed at about the same price in the same store. To unlock individual episodes, there are coin packs priced from around $4.99 to $24.99. The store also lists a separate Premium tier at about $4.99 to $9.99, which gives lighter viewers cheaper entry points than the full pass. Until you cancel it, the weekly subscription keeps renewing, as its rivals’ plans do. Because prices vary by country, platform and promotion, the figure on your own screen may differ. Four renewals of a $19.99 weekly pass come to roughly $80 a month, so do the math before you commit.

Terms Worth Knowing Before You Pay

The fine print in My Drama’s terms of use warrants more attention than most viewers give it. There is no easy refund if a series lets you down after you unlock it, since coin purchases are final. Coins are also forfeited after 12 months of inactivity, which means a balance you ignore for a year can simply vanish. For viewers in the EU and UK, there is a 14-day right of withdrawal, which reflects the consumer rules in those markets. Purchases made on the web are listed as non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise. Most importantly, the terms state plainly that deleting the app does not cancel your subscription. iPhone owners cancel under Settings, then their name, then Subscriptions, while Android users go through the Subscriptions menu in Google Play. Holywater does not process refunds for store purchases; Apple or Google handles them.

Knowing exactly who sits on the other side of the contract also helps. Everyone outside the US contracts with Holy Water Limited in Nicosia, Cyprus, while US users contract with XOLY LIMITED, a Delaware company. As with any vertical drama app, a further warning applies here. Modded APKs, unlimited coins and free coin generators are promised by unofficial sites, and such sites are not a safe way to watch anything. Cancelling the pass, not looking for a hack, is the proper move if the price feels too high.

The Verdict: A Challenger Backed by Hollywood

My Drama is not the largest vertical drama app, and on install counts it is not even close. What it has instead is an unusual mix: a Kyiv founding story, a Fox equity partner committed to more than 200 titles, fresh funding from January 2026 and a Webby on the shelf. Viewers get a practical advantage in Apple TV support, which ReelShort, for one, does not list. The downside is the same one that dogs every rival, namely a weekly pass of about $19.99 that renews quietly in the background. If you want Fox-produced romance and the option to watch on a television, the My Drama app earns a place on your home screen. When the largest claimed library is simply what you want, ShortMax, with its 50,000+ dramas, is the more obvious pick. Whatever you decide, never rely on the delete button: create a reminder the day you subscribe and cancel through your store account.