A Kyiv Studio Wagers on the Vertical Drama

Holywater wasn’t born as a TV business. The business was set up in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2020 by Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov, and its portfolio even now looks more like a lab for mobile entertainment than a streaming platform. My Passion covers books, My Muse handles AI, and FreeBits rounds out the lineup next to My Drama. It matters that the portfolio is this broad, since it reveals a company that sees video as one consumer product among several rather than its entire identity. The vertical drama, a format that began in China as duanju and is framed 9:16 for an upright phone, became its eventual wager. The groups behind the reel-short-app.com category’s largest players were Chinese and Singaporean, which made this a daring market for a small Ukrainian company to enter.

Spring 2024 and the Arrival of the My Drama App

Spring 2024 brought the launch of the My Drama app, though the exact date depends on which record you trust. Google Play lists March 13, 2024, the App Store shows May 9, 2024, and TechCrunch put the launch in April. Android seems to have come first, as the difference between those store dates indicates, with the iPhone version following about two months later. The genre’s go-to tropes dominated the opening slate. The Shy Beauty and the Billionaire Beast and Love Captive to a Mafia Boss were among the early titles, and the names alone tell you most of what you need to know about the tone. What ultimately made the company stand out was not the stories themselves but the partner it would soon be making them with.

Fox, $22M in Funding and a Webby Award

October 2025 was the month My Drama stopped being a startup curiosity. An equity stake in Holywater went to Fox Entertainment, and the agreement came with a commitment to produce more than 200 vertical titles over two years. A $22M funding round led by Horizon Capital followed three months later, in January 2026, when Holywater raised the money. The platform hosts Fox-produced titles such as Billionaire Blackmail, Bound by Obsession and My Heart’s Offside. In its App Store listing, the company features another credential: a Webby Award for Best Streaming Service from 2025. Few rivals can claim what those milestones give My Drama, namely a major American studio acting as both shareholder and producer.

My Drama Fact File

If you only have a moment, the table below offers the short version of the story. The ownership, legal, platform and pricing details that count most to a first-time viewer are collected there. As of September 2026, the prices are the ones listed in the US App Store. Country, platform and promotion all change them, so read them as a guide rather than a firm quote. The install number refers to Google Play, where the app displays 5M+ downloads. The legal entity you contract with depends on where you live, which is relevant if you ever need to contest a charge.

What It Feels Like to Watch My Drama

The whole category is built on the same basic experience, and My Drama sticks to it. Sized for a phone held upright, episodes are vertical, and in this genre they usually last a minute or two before a cliffhanger pushes you on to the next. With series often running anywhere from 20 to 100 episodes, one story can quietly eat up an evening in bite-sized pieces. The drama app truly distinguishes itself through the range of screens it supports. Beyond iPhone, iPad and Android, the app is listed for Vision Pro and for Apple TV on tvOS 18 or later. 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.

On the content side, the catalog mixes Holywater’s own early productions with the growing Fox slate. Titles like Billionaire Blackmail and Bound by Obsession demonstrate that the Fox releases stay close to the genre’s established formula. The candid caveat here is scale. At 5M+ installs on Google Play, the app has a small fraction of the 100M+ that ReelShort, DramaBox and ShortMax each list. That gap places My Drama in 2026 as a well-funded challenger rather than the category leader.

Pricing: What My Drama Costs in 2026

Of the three ways Holywater sells access, the weekly pass is the main figure. “My Drama: Full Access” costs about $19.99 a week in the US App Store as of September 2026. That puts it level with the weekly passes from ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave and GoodShort, all listed at about the same price in the same store. From roughly $4.99 to $24.99, coin packs open up individual episodes. Lighter viewers have lower-cost entry points than the full pass, since a separate Premium tier is listed at around $4.99 to $9.99. Prices differ by country, platform and promotion, so the figure on your own screen may be different. The weekly subscription renews automatically until you cancel it, like its rivals’ plans. Do the math before you commit, because four renewals of a $19.99 weekly pass total about $80 a month.

Before You Pay: Terms Worth Knowing

Most viewers pay less attention than they should to the fine print in My Drama’s terms of use. As coin purchases are final, there is no easy refund if a series disappoints after you unlock it. After 12 months of inactivity, coins are also forfeited, so a balance you ignore for a year can simply disappear. Except where the law requires otherwise, web purchases are labeled non-refundable. Viewers in the EU and UK get a 14-day right of withdrawal, in line with the consumer rules in those markets. The crucial point is this: the terms say clearly that deleting the app does not cancel your subscription. Android users use the Subscriptions menu in Google Play, while on an iPhone you cancel under Settings, then your name, then Subscriptions. Holywater does not handle refunds for store purchases; Apple or Google handles them.

It is also wise to know exactly who sits on the other side of the contract. XOLY LIMITED, a Delaware company, handles US users, whereas everyone else contracts with Holy Water Limited in Nicosia, Cyprus. In this case, as with any vertical drama app, a further warning is worth making. Sites that promise modded APKs, unlimited coins or free coin generators are unofficial and are not a safe way to watch anything. If the price seems steep, cancel the pass; do not go hunting for a hack.

Our Verdict: A Challenger With Hollywood in Its Corner

On install counts, My Drama is not even close to being the largest vertical drama app. 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 make up the unusual combination it offers instead. Viewers get a practical advantage in Apple TV support, which ReelShort, for one, does not list. A weekly pass of around $19.99 that renews quietly in the background is the downside, the same one that dogs every rival. If the largest claimed library is simply what you want, ShortMax, with its 50,000+ dramas, is the more obvious pick. Viewers who want Fox-produced romance and the option to watch on a TV will find that the My Drama app earns a place on their home screen. Whichever you pick, cancel through your store account rather than trusting the delete button, and set a reminder the day you subscribe.