短剧平台“回头”:AI剧失宠,真人剧回暖
根据QuestMobile的数据,红果的月活跃用户数量已突破3亿。从2023年8月上线至今,两年半时间里,红果用户数量增长30倍。在独立短剧App中,红果占比将近九成。
针对这份账单数据,两家短剧行业头部制作方负责人向南方周末记者表示:基本属实,并且不仅仅是真人短剧亏,AI剧同样在亏。
一位头部制作方向南方周末记者提供了一张截图。一家纯AI剧的制作方在朋友圈里写道:好消息:爆款率90%。坏消息:亏钱。
这有些出乎外界意料。随着seedance2.0的问世,AI剧取代真人剧似乎已是大势所趋。但事实上,平台的分成政策正在重新向真人剧倾斜。
2026年5月11日,抖音集团短剧版权中心宣布调高真人剧内容分成比例,自然流量场景下,付费内容分成比例从七成调高至八成,免费内容广告分成预算同等调高。
在平台政策的摇摆下,短剧从业者又走到了一个岔路口。

2026年4月18日,安徽六安一部古装微短剧拍摄现场,身着古装的群演正在候场。视觉中国 图
被高估的AI剧
过去两年多,红果通过向制作方提供不同比例的保底费用快速跑马圈地,很快拿下大盘一半的市场份额。
但随着AI剧的来袭,2月中旬红果曾向真人剧合作方口头通知,要求暂停所有未开机项目,保底政策有所调整。
这个政策让大量中小制作团队陷入资金链紧张的困境,真人剧开机量锐减。
2026年4月30日,中国网络视听协会发布2026年第一季度《微短剧创作指引》(下称《指引》)。指引显示,2026年第一季度,全行业上线微短剧约12.8万部,其中AI微短剧约12.2万部,占比超过95%,真人剧占比仅为5%。
12.2万部的AI微短剧,源于AI带来的低成本、高效率、规模化,这让AI剧快速成为微短剧行业主要的内容生产方。
《指引》里披露了另一个数据:2026年春节档,真人剧上线量约为AI剧的1/50,但总播放量却达到AI剧的25倍。
王欣是一家真人短剧头部厂牌的从业者,她对南方周末记者说,即便是《菩提临世AI真人版》这部爆款AI剧,直到下架,全网播放量也就5个亿,红果站内热度并没有破亿,而很多真人剧的播放量能达到20亿、30亿。
她认为,爆炸式增长的AI剧虽然产能迅速攀升,但内容过于同质化、流量分散,变现效率持续走低。
AI短剧、漫剧导演庞铮也认为,有些所谓的“爆款”AI剧,数据表面光鲜,实则是亏钱的。因为数据依赖于推流。比如,一部抖音总播放量超过3亿次的爆款AI短剧,在红果平台上却只有14万的收藏,而另一部播放量不到7500万次的AI剧,红果上的收藏量达到34万。
另据微短剧等行业监测服务平台DataEye-ADX提供的数据,4月AI剧/漫剧达到4.4万部,但其中有85%播放量都没有突破百万,这意味着大量的AI剧并没有触及观众。
“平台一开始想靠AI短剧拉新男性用户,后来发现不太行,还流失了女性观众。目前AI剧留不住人,也没有商业价值。”王欣对南方周末记者说。
“平台就是爷”
被AI轰炸了两个月的短剧赛道,在2026年4月份迎来了新变化。
4月7日,红果宣布全面启动低质漫剧专项治理,一周内累计拦截和处罚下架违规低质漫剧超过3500部。一周后,在第十三届中国网络视听大会上,红果短剧宣布投入5亿元专项资金,释放出将持续扶持真人短剧内容创新与现实题材深耕的信息。
4月30日,抖音集团短剧版权中心发布通知,正式调整漫剧分成系数。作为此前享受最高分成系数的仿真人剧,分成系数从六成下降至四成,3D动画漫剧则砍掉20%分成。
“红果前期助推AI短剧,是抓住技术红利抢占短期流量市场,通过AI短剧,快速填充平台内容体量,完成市场占位。”中国视协微短剧专业委员会副秘书长赵瑞哲对南方周末记者表示。
但每个月上架超过4万部AI微短剧中,大量的低质AI内容持续泛滥,这对于平台并不是一件好事。
真人剧再次被平台提了出来。在调整包括AI剧、漫剧的分成系数后, 5月11日,抖音集团短剧版权中心发布公告显示,抖音将调高真人剧内容分成比例,自然流量场景下,付费内容分成比例从七成调高至八成。
另据抖音平台提供给南方周末记者的信息,平台2026年真人短剧的保底扶持预算超15亿元,部均保底金额较2025年提升约60%。针对真人剧核心品类,平台将全面调高内容分成比例。
其中包括:设立单部最高150万元的头部剧激励政策;推出最高20%的续作激励,鼓励系列化开发,延长IP生命周期;设立2亿元专项资金,扶持现实主义、悬疑、都市群像等创新与差异化内容。
在亲手点燃AI这一市场后,平台又掉头对外释放并未放弃真人剧的讯号。在这样的摇摆之间,制作方的日子可以用动荡来形容。一位头部制作公司的CEO在2026年2月底暂停了所有手中的真人剧项目,并开始组建团队、找到新的办公地,在AI领域展开布局。
面对平台的政策变化,这位CEO向南方周末记者连续发来三个叹息,并表示:“没有办法,平台就是爷。”
被扶持的真人剧
在赵瑞哲看来,平台现在要做的,是调整AI与真人内容的配比。包括压缩劣质AI漫剧,扶持真人精品,本质是平衡短期流量盈利与长期平台品牌转型。
“监管逐步收紧,短剧需要向主流精品内容靠拢。单一依赖AI短剧会让平台陷入低俗同质化竞争,真人精品短剧才具备长效IP打造、商业变现以及政策合规的发展空间。”赵瑞哲对南方周末记者说。
这与主管部门的态度密不可分。
2026年5月14日,国家广播电视总局召开“微短剧精品创作传播计划”工作部署推进会,宣布6家重点网络视听平台(抖音/红果短剧、腾讯视频、芒果TV、咪咕、快手、点众)将合计投入至少60亿元资金,专项支持优秀真人微短剧的创作与传播。
这是行业迄今为止最大规模的官方资金支持。
5月26日,国家广播电视总局发布两项重要文件:《“微短剧精品创作传播计划”实施方案》《2026年“网络视听节目精品创作传播工程”扶持项目申报通知》。
“这两份文件,就是此前披露的60亿元资金的官方申报入口和评审标准。”赵瑞哲认为,微短剧行业将彻底告别野蛮生长时代,进入由国家队主导、真金白银扶持、精品化发展的全新阶段。
本质上,短剧平台的发展已经进入转型阶段。AI的出现只是加速了行业问题的显现。长期以来同质化套路的内容,不断消耗用户的耐心,流量增长事实上已经出现乏力。
“即便没有AI出现,行业也必须走向精品化。AI的到来放大了产能过剩的问题,倒逼行业更快摒弃流量内卷,依靠优质内容维系自身业态的长期生命力。”赵瑞哲表示。
在她看来,这也是折腾了几个月,无论是真人剧还是AI剧都在亏钱的原因。当平台取消保底、下调劣质内容分账,行业投机红利消失,靠量产劣质内容盈利的模式行不通。AI片面压缩成本丢失内容质量,真人短剧迟迟未能完成精品转型,两条路线都没能抓住用户长期需求。
“短剧行业群里,目前都是哀鸿遍野。无论是真人剧,还是AI制片方。我们自嘲,死于努力,越努力越贫穷。”王欣对南方周末记者说。
但对于一线演员来说,现在的处境已经远远好过3月份。
横店短剧演员吴维斌,在5月26日这一天终于接到了戏。与他合作的剧组,有的在5月底一口气开机了五六部。
“AI没人看了,数据比不了真人剧。”他对南方周末记者说,红果需要好东西、好内容去填充,观众才会埋单。
“我们只希望能回到去年的分账水平。”王欣对于接下来的日子只有这一个期待。2025年,头部厂牌中,有五部短剧的分账达到3000万元。根据抖音提供的2026年3月份分账战报,真人剧中,最高的2部才实现分账800万元。
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Short-form drama platforms are “turning back”: AI dramas are falling out of favor, while live-action dramas are making a comeback.
This report reveals a precipitous drop in revenue for Douyin’s popular short dramas—180 million views yielded a mere 180,000 yuan in settlement for the production team. Revenue from 10,000 views plummeted from 100 yuan to the current 5-10 yuan. Some studios that invested over a million yuan have now stopped production to cut their losses and are forced to exit the market at a complete loss.
According to QuestMobile data, Hongguo’s monthly active users have exceeded 300 million. Since its launch in August 2023, Hongguo’s user base has grown 30-fold in two and a half years. Among independent short drama apps, Hongguo accounts for nearly 90%.
Regarding this bill data, the heads of two leading short drama production companies told Southern Weekend reporters that it is basically true, and that it is not only live-action short dramas that are losing money, but AI dramas are also losing money.
A leading production company provided a screenshot to a reporter from Southern Weekly. The company producing a purely AI-generated drama wrote on its WeChat Moments: “Good news: 90% hit rate. Bad news: We’re losing money.”
This is somewhat unexpected. With the advent of Seedance 2.0, it seems inevitable that AI-generated dramas will replace live-action dramas. However, in reality, platforms’ revenue-sharing policies are shifting back towards live-action dramas.
On May 11, 2026, Douyin Group’s Short Drama Copyright Center announced an increase in the revenue sharing ratio for live-action dramas. Under natural traffic scenarios, the revenue sharing ratio for paid content will be increased from 70% to 80%, and the advertising revenue sharing budget for free content will be increased accordingly.
With platform policies shifting, short drama practitioners have reached another crossroads.

On April 18, 2026, extras dressed in ancient costumes waited for their turn on the set of a period drama short film in Lu’an, Anhui Province. (Visual China photo)
Overrated AI dramas
Over the past two years, Hongguo has rapidly expanded its market share by providing different percentages of guaranteed fees to producers, quickly capturing half of the market.
However, with the arrival of AI dramas, in mid-February, Hongguo verbally notified its live-action drama partners that all unstarted projects should be suspended, and the minimum guarantee policy was adjusted.
This policy has plunged many small and medium-sized production teams into a predicament of tight cash flow, resulting in a sharp decrease in the number of live-action dramas starting production.
On April 30, 2026, the China Netcasting Association released the “Guidelines for the Creation of Micro-Dramas” (hereinafter referred to as the “Guidelines”) for the first quarter of 2026. The Guidelines show that in the first quarter of 2026, the entire industry launched approximately 128,000 micro-dramas, of which approximately 122,000 were AI-generated micro-dramas, accounting for more than 95%, while live-action dramas accounted for only 5%.
The 122,000 AI-generated short dramas are a result of the low cost, high efficiency, and scalability brought about by AI, which has made AI dramas a major content producer in the short drama industry.
The guidelines also revealed another statistic: during the 2026 Spring Festival season, the number of live-action dramas released was about 1/50 of that of AI dramas, but the total number of views reached 25 times that of AI dramas.
Wang Xin, an employee of a leading live-action short drama production company, told Southern Weekend that even the hit AI drama “Bodhi’s Arrival AI Live-Action Version” only had 500 million views across the entire network before it was taken down, and its popularity on the Red Fruit website did not exceed 100 million, while many live-action dramas can reach 2 billion or 3 billion views.
She believes that although the production capacity of AI dramas has increased rapidly due to explosive growth, the content is too homogeneous, the traffic is scattered, and the monetization efficiency continues to decline.
Pang Zheng, director of AI short dramas and comics, also believes that some so-called “hit” AI dramas, despite their impressive data, are actually losing money. This is because the data depends on streaming. For example, a hit AI short drama on Douyin with over 300 million views only has 140,000 favorites on the Hongguo platform, while another AI drama with less than 75 million views has 340,000 favorites on Hongguo.
According to data from DataEye-ADX, an industry monitoring service platform for short dramas, there were 44,000 AI dramas/anime series in April, but 85% of them did not reach one million views, which means that a large number of AI dramas did not reach the audience.
“The platform initially wanted to attract new male users with AI short dramas, but later found that it didn’t work and even lost female viewers. Currently, AI dramas can’t retain users and have no commercial value,” Wang Xin told Southern Weekend.
“The platform is king.”
The short drama genre, which had been bombarded by AI for two months, saw new changes in April 2026.
On April 7th, Hongguo announced a comprehensive crackdown on low-quality comics, intercepting and penalizing over 3,500 such works within a week. A week later, at the 13th China Internet Audio-Visual Conference, Hongguo Short Drama announced a 500 million yuan investment, signaling its continued support for innovation in live-action short drama content and the development of realistic themes.
On April 30, Douyin Group’s Short Drama Copyright Center issued a notice officially adjusting the revenue sharing ratio for animated dramas. Previously enjoying the highest revenue sharing ratio, the ratio for humanoid dramas dropped from 60% to 40%, while 3D animated dramas saw a 20% reduction in their revenue sharing.
“Hongguo’s early promotion of AI short dramas was aimed at seizing the technological dividend to capture the short-term traffic market. By using AI short dramas, it quickly filled the platform’s content volume and completed its market positioning,” Zhao Ruizhe, deputy secretary-general of the Micro-Short Drama Professional Committee of the China Television Artists Association, told Southern Weekend.
However, with over 40,000 AI-themed short dramas being released each month, a large amount of low-quality AI content continues to flood the market, which is not a good thing for the platform.
Live-action dramas have been brought up again by the platform. After adjusting the revenue sharing ratios for AI dramas and animated dramas, on May 11, Douyin Group’s Short Drama Copyright Center issued an announcement stating that Douyin will increase the revenue sharing ratio for live-action drama content. Under natural traffic scenarios, the revenue sharing ratio for paid content will be increased from 70% to 80%.
According to information provided to Southern Weekly by Douyin, the platform’s guaranteed support budget for live-action short dramas in 2026 exceeds 1.5 billion yuan, with the average guaranteed amount per drama increasing by approximately 60% compared to 2025. For the core category of live-action dramas, the platform will comprehensively increase the content revenue sharing ratio.
These include: establishing an incentive policy of up to 1.5 million yuan for top-tier dramas; launching a sequel incentive of up to 20% to encourage serial development and extend the IP life cycle; and establishing a special fund of 200 million yuan to support innovative and differentiated content such as realism, suspense, and urban ensemble dramas.
After igniting the AI market, the platform then signaled that it hadn’t given up on live-action dramas. Amidst this shift in direction, the lives of production companies can only be described as turbulent. The CEO of a leading production company suspended all its live-action drama projects at the end of February 2026 and began assembling a team, finding new office space, and laying the groundwork for AI development.
Faced with the platform’s policy changes, the CEO sent three sighs to a reporter from Southern Weekly, saying, “There’s nothing we can do; the platform is the boss.”
Supported live-action dramas
According to Zhao Ruizhe, what the platform needs to do now is adjust the ratio of AI to live-action content. This includes reducing low-quality AI-generated animation and supporting high-quality live-action content, which is essentially about balancing short-term traffic profits with long-term platform brand transformation.
“With increasingly stringent regulations, short dramas need to move closer to mainstream, high-quality content. Relying solely on AI-generated short dramas will lead platforms into vulgar and homogenous competition. Only high-quality live-action short dramas have the potential for long-term IP development, commercial monetization, and policy compliance,” Zhao Ruizhe told Southern Weekend.
This is closely related to the attitude of the relevant authorities.
On May 14, 2026, the State Administration of Radio and Television held a meeting to deploy and promote the “Micro-Short Drama Excellence Creation and Dissemination Plan,” announcing that six key online audiovisual platforms (Douyin/Hongguo Short Drama, Tencent Video, Mango TV, Migu, Kuaishou, and Dianzhong) will invest a total of at least 6 billion yuan to specifically support the creation and dissemination of outstanding live-action micro-short dramas.
This is the largest official funding support the industry has ever received.
On May 26, the State Administration of Radio and Television released two important documents: the “Implementation Plan for the Creation and Dissemination of High-Quality Micro-Dramas” and the “Notice on the Application for Support Projects of the 2026 ‘Creation and Dissemination of High-Quality Online Audiovisual Programs'”.
“These two documents are the official application portal and review criteria for the previously disclosed 6 billion yuan funding.” Zhao Ruizhe believes that the micro-drama industry will completely bid farewell to the era of unchecked growth and enter a new stage of development led by national teams, supported by real money, and focused on high-quality production.
Essentially, short-drama platforms have entered a transformation phase. The emergence of AI has only accelerated the manifestation of industry problems. Long-standing, formulaic content has continuously eroded user patience, and traffic growth has already shown signs of fatigue.
“Even without AI, the industry must move towards high-quality products. The arrival of AI has amplified the problem of overcapacity, forcing the industry to abandon the competition for traffic and rely on high-quality content to maintain the long-term vitality of its business,” Zhao Ruizhe said.
In her view, this is also why both live-action and AI-generated dramas have been losing money after several months of effort. When platforms cancel minimum guarantees and reduce revenue sharing for low-quality content, the industry’s speculative dividends disappear, and the model of profiting from mass-producing low-quality content becomes unsustainable. AI has sacrificed content quality for cost-cutting, and live-action short dramas have been slow to transition to high-quality productions; neither approach has captured the long-term needs of users.
“In the short drama industry group, there is nothing but lamentation right now. Whether it’s live-action dramas or AI production companies, we jokingly say that we die from hard work, and the harder we work, the poorer we become,” Wang Xin told Southern Weekend reporter.
But for A-list actors, the situation is now far better than it was in March.
Wu Weibin, a short drama actor from Hengdian, finally received a role on May 26. Some of the production teams he was working with started filming five or six dramas at the end of May.
“No one watches AI shows anymore; the data can’t compare to live-action dramas,” he told Southern Weekend. “Hongguo needs good stuff and good content to fill the void so that viewers will pay for it.”
“We just hope to return to last year’s revenue-sharing level.” Wang Xin has only this expectation for the days to come. In 2025, among the top brands, five short dramas achieved revenue sharing of 30 million yuan. According to Douyin’s revenue-sharing report for March 2026, the two highest-grossing live-action dramas only achieved 8 million yuan in revenue sharing.
