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Secret Billionaires. Age-Gap Marriages. Plenty of Revenge.
How a Chinese-backed soap-opera app is keeping L.A. actors employed.
During my set visit, I mused with executive producer Bofan Zhang that the movie’s plot was a bit like Good Will Hunting in reverse; instead of being discovered, nurtured, and ultimately healed, Lawson’s working-class genius is tortured by a villain who takes credit for her work and taunted by clueless onlookers who, for some reason, doubt her facility with math. It didn’t take long, however, to find actors through advertisements in trade publications like Backstage, whose casting calls, Hao told me, are now “80 percent verticals.” The relative lack of opportunities elsewhere in Hollywood means that enough mobile microdrama is being produced to cultivate a new class of talent that appears only in verticals. Now, the big screen is governed by gate-keepers who seem not only preoccupied with rehashing the themes of the comic book’s golden age but also oblivious to the way the internet has fractured and atomized people into niche audiences, which are seeing their interests reflected in ever more specific newsletters, podcasts, and TikToks.
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