A Kyiv Studio Puts Its Wager on the Vertical Drama

Holywater was not started as a TV business. Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov started the studio in 2020 in Kyiv, Ukraine, and its lineup even now looks more like a mobile entertainment laboratory than a streaming service. Alongside My Drama sit My Passion for books, My Muse for AI and FreeBits. The range matters: it reveals a business for which video is one of several consumer products, not its entire identity. The vertical drama, a format that began in China as duanju and is framed 9:16 for a phone held upright, was the bet it eventually made. Moving into this market was a bold step for a small Ukrainian company, since the short drama hub genre’s biggest names were backed by Chinese and Singaporean groups.

Spring 2024: The My Drama App Hits the Stores

The exact date of the My Drama app hinges on which record you trust, but it arrived in spring 2024. The launch date varies by source: TechCrunch placed it in April, Google Play lists March 13, 2024, and the App Store lists May 9, 2024. The gap between those store dates suggests that Android came first and the iPhone version arrived about two months later. The genre’s most popular tropes filled the initial slate. Most of what you need to know about the style comes through in the first titles such as The Shy Beauty and the Billionaire Beast and Love Captive to a Mafia Boss. The studio was eventually distinguished not by the stories themselves but by the partner it would soon be making them with.

A Fox Deal, a $22M Raise and a Webby

October 2025 was the month My Drama stopped being a startup curiosity. Fox Entertainment took an equity stake in Holywater, and the deal came with a pledge to produce more than 200 vertical titles over two years. Horizon Capital headed a $22M round for Holywater three months later, in January 2026. The platform carries Fox-produced titles such as Billionaire Blackmail, Bound by Obsession and My Heart’s Offside. The company also has a Webby Award for Best Streaming Service from 2025, an honor it shows off on its App Store listing. Few rivals can boast what these milestones hand My Drama, namely a big American studio serving as both shareholder and producer.

My Drama at a Glance

The quick version of the story is in the table below, for anyone who only has a minute. The ownership, legal, platform and pricing details that count most to a new viewer are collected in one place. The prices are the ones shown in the US App Store as of September 2026. They change by country, platform and promotion, so read them as a guide rather than a fixed quote. Where you live determines the legal entity you contract with, something that is relevant if you ever need to challenge a charge. The install figure refers to Google Play, where the app shows 5M+ downloads.

How Watching on My Drama Feels

The core experience is the one the whole category is built on. In this genre, episodes generally run a minute or two before a cliffhanger nudges you on to the next one, and they are vertical, sized for a phone held upright. Series often run anywhere from 20 to 100 episodes, so a single story can silently eat up an evening in bite-sized pieces. Where this drama app really sets itself apart is the range of screens it supports. Besides iPhone, iPad and Android, the app is listed for Vision Pro and for Apple TV on tvOS 18 or later. ReelShort’s App Store listing, by comparison, shows no Apple TV version at all, which shows that that big-screen option is less common than you might think. The option transforms a solo phone habit into something a couple can watch together, even though a 9:16 frame will never fill a widescreen television.

Holywater’s own early productions and the growing Fox slate make up the catalog, blending the two. The Fox releases stay close to the genre’s familiar formula, as titles like Billionaire Blackmail and Bound by Obsession make clear. Here, the candid caveat is scale. With 5M+ installs on Google Play, the app has a fraction of the 100M+ that ReelShort, DramaBox and ShortMax each show. That gap places My Drama in 2026 as a well-financed challenger rather than the category leader.

Pricing: What My Drama Costs in 2026

Access is sold three ways, and the headline figure is the weekly pass. In the US App Store as of September 2026, “My Drama: Full Access” runs about $19.99 a week. ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave and GoodShort list their weekly passes at about the same price in the same store, so My Drama sits level with them. To unlock individual episodes, there are coin bundles running from roughly $4.99 to $24.99. Lighter viewers have cheaper entry points than the full pass, because a separate Premium tier is listed at about $4.99 to $9.99. Prices vary by country, platform and promotion, so the figure on your own device may differ. The weekly subscription auto-renews until you cancel it, like its rivals’ plans. Four renewals of a $19.99 weekly pass come to around $80 a month, so do the math before you commit.

Terms Worth Knowing Before You Pay

The terms of use for My Drama contain fine print that deserves more attention than most viewers give it. As coin purchases are final, there is 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 vanish. In line with the consumer rules in those markets, viewers in the EU and UK get a 14-day right of withdrawal. Except where the law requires otherwise, web purchases are described as non-refundable. The key point of all: the terms say clearly that deleting the app does not cancel your subscription. On an iPhone you cancel under Settings, then your 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.

It also helps to know exactly who sits on the other side of the contract. Everyone outside the US contracts with Holy Water Limited in Nicosia, Cyprus, while US users deal with XOLY LIMITED, a Delaware company. One more warning applies here as much as to any vertical drama app. Any site promising modded APKs, unlimited coins or free coin generators is unofficial, and it is not a safe way to watch anything. When the price seems steep, the right step is cancelling the pass; do not go hunting for a hack.

Verdict: A Challenger With Hollywood on Its Side

Measured by install counts, My Drama is not the largest vertical drama app, and it is not even close. What it offers instead is an unlikely combination: 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. ReelShort, for one, does not list Apple TV support, which makes it the practical advantage for My Drama viewers. As with every rival, the drawback is a weekly pass of about $19.99 that keeps renewing quietly in the background. The My Drama app earns a place on your home screen if you want Fox-produced romance and the option to watch on a TV. For viewers who simply want the largest claimed library, ShortMax and its 50,000+ dramas are the more obvious choice. Either way, set a reminder the day you subscribe, and cancel through your store account rather than trusting the delete button.