Brent Montgomery: Hollywood ‘Needs a Win.’ Microdramas Are the Answer
The Wheelhouse CEO tells me about investing in app My Drama: ‘Gatekeepers are the audience now’; plus: a YouTube competition series scoop
This is a preview of Like & Subscribe, my standalone Ankler Media newsletter on the creator economy. I cover the creator economy. I wrote about TikTok’s and BuzzFeed’s moves in microdramas and how Snapchat is minting new stars and gathered top creator economy execs’ predictions for 2026. Email me at natalie@theankler.com
Hello! I’ve got a newsy newsletter for you today that includes a scoop about a genre-mashup reality series premiering this week on YouTube, plus an interview that builds on my reporting from last week about the booming business of microdramas.
But first! This week marks the one-year anniversary of Like & Subscribe, and I want to thank all of you who have supported my work with a paid subscription this year. I’ve got big plans for year two that will mean even more scoops, analysis and thoughtful deep dives in your inbox each week (you’ll find all three in today’s newsletter).
Now for my scoop: I’ve learned that a new reality series will premiere tomorrow on YouTube that combines horror, true crime and comedy, all popular genres on the platform. La Casa del Miedo — which hails from Latino media company Sonoro and producer Ben Odell via his 3Pas Studios shingle (which he co-founded with Eugenio Derbez) — is an eight-episode competition show in which eight creators will be tasked with spending a night in a house that might be haunted.
Mexican podcaster José Antonio Badía will host the show, whose creator-contestants include Julio Orozco, Vero Monti, Nina de la Fuente, Bobby Lopez, Condor, Zach Jaquith and others. In each episode the creators will compete in challenges designed to provoke fear — and the one with the highest heart rate will be eliminated. The last creator standing will only win if they can survive in the house alone.
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La Casa del Miedo reminds me a bit of the experimentation that took place on YouTube in the mid-2010s (who else remembers Fight of the Living Dead?), now from the producer of popular Spanish-language podcasts and the production company behind Apple TV’s Aculpulco. I’ll be watching to see if, a decade later, more living room-centric viewership and in general more eyeballs on YouTube can propel the show into a hit.
And as for today’s analysis and deeper dive… I previewed for you last week why I believe 2026 will be the year creators take their place in the future of microdramas, and just a couple days later one of the biggest players in the space, Holywater — the company behind My Drama, a top 10 app based on in-app revenue, per Sensor Tower — announced that it’s raised $22 million in financing led by Horizon Capital with participation from Wheelhouse, Brent Montgomery’s reality TV production shop and investment platform. This follows an October investment from Fox Entertainment that included a commitment to produce 200 series for My Drama.
Montgomery has always been ahead of the trends, whether he was developing the concept for Pawn Stars at the dawn of the reality television boom or putting together the Hype House show for Netflix before most of Hollywood was taking TikTokers seriously. (More recently, Wheelhouse was behind the Duck Dynasty reboot and Netflix’s Million Dollar Secret.) In fact, he tells me he first dipped a toe into microdramas four years ago, long before most of the U.S. entertainment industry was taking notice. Intrigued by his interest in joining the fray now — particularly with Holywater, which has pioneered the use of AI to quickly and cheaply tell stories about billionaire romances and secret identities — I called him up about his investment and how Hollywood’s growing appetite for creator-first content is informing his next moves.
Head over to Like & Subscribe for my conversation with Montgomery (lightly edited), where we dig into:
Microdramas’ unique ability to create their own IP — with “emotive, repeatable stories”
The untapped potential for microdramas in the non-scripted space
What’s really ground-breaking about the vertical format (not just the length) and how it improves storytelling
Lessons from making Hype House and how creators have transformed the way they bring their brands to the screen since
Why Montgomery expects more legacy entertainment players to move into microdramas: “Hollywood needs a win”
The dynamic shift in storytelling and content creation, and who are the gatekeepers now
How the creator economy is evolving into the most important source of IP
The rest of this column is for paid subscribers to Like & Subscribe, a standalone newsletter dedicated to the creator economy from Ankler Media. Click here or on the button below to access the full story.
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