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A Kyiv Studio Places Its Bet on the Vertical Drama

At first, Holywater was not a TV outfit. In 2020 Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov set up the company in Kyiv, Ukraine, and its range of products even now reads more like a mobile entertainment laboratory than a streaming platform. My Passion covers books, My Muse is for AI, and FreeBits completes the set beside My Drama. This breadth is telling, since video is one of several consumer products for the company, not its whole identity. In the end, it put its wager on the vertical drama, a format born in China as duanju and framed 9:16 for reel shorts 2025 an upright phone. The groups behind the sector’s biggest names were Chinese and Singaporean, making this a bold market for a small Ukrainian company to enter.

The My Drama App Launches in Spring 2024

Spring 2024 brought the debut of the My Drama app, although the exact date depends on which source you trust. Per TechCrunch, the launch came in April, while Google Play lists March 13, 2024, and the App Store shows May 9, 2024. Based on the difference between those store dates, Android likely came first and the iPhone version followed about two months later. The genre’s most popular tropes dominated the first slate. Initial titles like The Shy Beauty and the Billionaire Beast and Love Captive to a Mafia Boss reveal most of what you need to know about the tone just by their names. The studio was ultimately distinguished not by the stories themselves but by the collaborator it would soon be producing them with.

Fox, $22M in Fresh Funding and a Webby Win

My Drama ceased to be a startup curiosity in October 2025. An equity stake in Holywater was taken by Fox Entertainment, and the deal included a commitment to make more than 200 vertical titles over two years. Fox-produced titles on the platform include Billionaire Blackmail, Bound by Obsession and My Heart’s Offside. Three months later, in January 2026, Holywater closed $22M in a round led by Horizon Capital. A Webby Award for Best Streaming Service from 2025 also belongs to the company, which shows off it on its App Store listing. Those milestones, taken together, hand My Drama a rare asset that few rivals can claim: a major American studio serving as both shareholder and producer.

My Drama: The Fact File

The condensed version of the story is in the table below, for readers who only have a minute. It brings together the ownership, legal, platform and pricing details that count most to a new viewer. Prices are the ones displayed in the US App Store as of September 2026. Read them as a guide rather than a quote, because they differ by country, platform and promotion. Where you live determines the legal entity you deal with, something that becomes relevant if you ever need to dispute a charge. The install count comes from Google Play, where the app lists 5M+ downloads.

How Watching on My Drama Plays Out

The basic experience is the one the whole category is built on. Framed for an upright phone, episodes are vertical, and in this genre they usually run one or two minutes before a cliffhanger nudges you on to the next. As series often run anywhere from 20 to 100 episodes, a single story can silently eat up an evening in short bites. The range of screens it supports is where this drama app really distinguishes itself. On top of iPhone, iPad and Android, it appears for Apple TV running tvOS 18 or later and for Vision Pro. That big-screen option is rarer than you might expect: by comparison, ReelShort’s App Store listing shows no Apple TV version at all. Granted, a 9:16 frame will never fill a widescreen TV, yet the option converts a solo phone habit into something a couple can enjoy together.

The growing Fox slate sits beside Holywater’s own early productions in the library. The Fox releases stay close to the genre’s familiar formula, as titles like Billionaire Blackmail and Bound by Obsession make clear. Scale is where the fair caveat comes in. ReelShort, DramaBox and ShortMax each list 100M+ installs on Google Play, whereas My Drama lists 5M+, a small fraction of that. This gap puts My Drama in 2026 as a well-funded challenger rather than the category leader.

What My Drama Costs in 2026: Plans and Prices

Holywater sells access in three ways, and the main figure is the weekly pass. About $19.99 per week is what „My Drama: Full Access“ costs in the US App Store as of September 2026. The weekly passes from ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave and GoodShort are listed at about the same price in the same store, which puts My Drama on par with them. At about $4.99 to $24.99, coin bundles unlock individual episodes. With a separate Premium tier listed at about $4.99 to $9.99, lighter viewers get lower-cost entry points than the full pass. Just as with its rivals‘ plans, the weekly subscription keeps renewing automatically until you cancel it. The figure on your own screen may differ, as prices change by country, platform and promotion. Do the math before signing up: at four renewals, a $19.99 weekly pass comes to roughly $80 a month.

Terms Worth Knowing Before You Pay

The terms of use for My Drama include fine print worth more attention than most viewers give it. All coin purchase is final, which means no easy refund if a series lets you down after you unlock it. After 12 months of inactivity, coins are also forfeited, so a balance left untouched for a year can simply disappear. In line with the consumer rules in those markets, viewers in the EU and UK receive a 14-day right of withdrawal. Whatever you buy on the web is described as non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise. Deleting the app does not cancel your subscription, and the terms say so plainly, which is the most important point of all. Android users go through the Subscriptions menu in Google Play, while on an iPhone you cancel under Settings, then your name, then Subscriptions. When you buy through a store, refunds are handled by Apple or Google, not by Holywater.

It is also useful to know exactly who sits on the other side of the contract. US users sign with XOLY LIMITED, a Delaware company, while everyone else contracts with Holy Water Limited in Nicosia, Cyprus. As with any vertical drama app, one more warning applies here. Sites that promise modded APKs, unlimited coins or free coin generators are unofficial and are not a safe way to watch anything. The proper move to a steep price is to cancel the pass, not to look for a hack.

The Verdict: A Challenger With Hollywood

My Drama is not the biggest vertical drama app, and on install counts it is not even close. What it has instead is an unusual combination: a Kyiv founding story, a Fox equity partner signed up for more than 200 titles, fresh funding from January 2026 and a Webby on the shelf. The practical advantage for viewers is Apple TV support, something ReelShort, for one, does not list. As with every rival, the drawback is a weekly pass of about $19.99 that keeps renewing quietly in the background. If you simply want the largest claimed library, ShortMax, with its 50,000+ dramas, is the more obvious pick. If you want Fox-produced romance and the option to watch on a television, the My Drama app deserves a place on your home screen. Either way, set a reminder the day you subscribe, and cancel through your store account rather than trusting the delete button.