ReelShort Originals Guide 2026 Start Watching Now

The Vertical Drama Bet of a Kyiv Studio

TV was not how Holywater got its start. In 2020 Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov founded the studio in Kyiv, Ukraine, and its lineup even now reads more like a lab for mobile entertainment than a streaming platform. My Drama sits next to My Passion for books, My Muse for AI and FreeBits. It is telling that the portfolio is this broad, because it reveals a business that sees video as one consumer product among several rather than its entire identity. The wager it ultimately made was on the vertical drama, a format reelshortfree.org that originated in China as duanju and is composed 9:16 for an upright phone. Breaking into this market was bold for a small Ukrainian business, because the category’s biggest names were supported by Chinese and Singaporean groups.

Spring 2024: The My Drama App Launches

The My Drama app arrived in spring 2024, although the exact date depends on which source you trust. Google Play lists March 13, 2024, the App Store shows May 9, 2024, and TechCrunch dated the launch in April. Android appears to have come first, since the gap between those store dates indicates, with the iPhone version arriving about two months later. The genre’s best-loved tropes shaped the opening slate. Initial titles like The Shy Beauty and the Billionaire Beast and Love Captive to a Mafia Boss tell you most of what you need to know about the tone through their names alone. It was not the stories themselves that ultimately made the studio stand out, but the collaborator it would soon be producing them with.

Fox, $22M in Fresh Funding and a Webby Win

My Drama ceased to be just a startup curiosity in October 2025. Fox Entertainment acquired an equity stake in Holywater, and the deal came with a pledge to make more than 200 vertical titles over two years. In January 2026, three months on, Holywater raised $22M in a funding round led by Horizon Capital. The service carries Fox-produced titles such as Billionaire Blackmail, Bound by Obsession and My Heart’s Offside. The company additionally has a 2025 Webby Award for Best Streaming Service, a credential it features on its App Store listing. Those milestones, taken together, give My Drama a rare asset that few rivals can claim: a major American studio serving as both shareholder and producer.

My Drama Fact File

The quick version of the story is in the table below, for readers who only have a minute. It collects the ownership, legal, platform and pricing details that count most to a new viewer. The prices reflect the US App Store as of September 2026. Because they vary by country, platform and promotion, read them as a guide rather than a quote. The legal entity you sign up with depends on where you live, which becomes relevant if you ever need to dispute a charge. On Google Play, where the install figure comes from, the app shows 5M+ downloads.

Topic	Information
Parent company	Holywater (established in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2020)
Founders	Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov
Related apps	My Passion for books, My Muse for AI, plus FreeBits
Contract party, US users	XOLY LIMITED (Delaware)
Contract party, other users	Holy Water Limited (Nicosia, Cyprus)
Launch date	Spring 2024 (Google Play: March 13; App Store: May 9)
Platforms	iPhone, iPad, Apple TV (tvOS 18+), Vision Pro, Android, web
Installs on Android	Google Play: 5M+
Full access pass	About $19.99 a week, auto-renewing
Coin bundles	About $4.99 to $24.99
Premium tier	Around $4.99 to $9.99
Studio backer	Fox Entertainment, equity stake since October 2025, 200+ titles over two years
Latest funding	$22M in January 2026, led by Horizon Capital
Recognition	Webby Award for Best Streaming Service, 2025

How Watching on My Drama Feels

The whole category is built on this same core experience, and My Drama sticks to it. Episodes are vertical, formatted for a phone held upright, and in this genre they usually run a minute or two before a cliffhanger pushes you on to the next one. With series often running anywhere from 20 to 100 episodes, one story can silently eat up an evening in bite-sized pieces. The drama app really distinguishes itself through the range of screens it supports. Apart from iPhone, iPad and Android, listings show it for Vision Pro and for Apple TV on tvOS 18 or later. This big-screen option is rarer than you might think: for comparison, ReelShort’s App Store listing shows no Apple TV version at all. A 9:16 frame will never fill a widescreen TV, but the option turns a solo phone habit into something a couple can watch together.

In terms of content, the catalog mixes Holywater’s own early productions with the growing Fox slate. The Fox releases hew close to the genre’s established formula, as titles like Billionaire Blackmail and Bound by Obsession make plain. Scale is the honest caveat here. ReelShort, DramaBox and ShortMax each list 100M+ installs on Google Play, whereas My Drama shows 5M+, a fraction of that. This gap shows where My Drama stands in 2026, as a well-funded challenger rather than the category leader.

What My Drama Costs in 2026: Plans and Prices

Of the three ways Holywater sells access, the weekly pass is the key figure. “My Drama: Full Access” runs about $19.99 a week in the US App Store as of September 2026. The weekly passes from ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave and GoodShort are listed at about the same price in the same store, which puts My Drama level with them. Coin bundles, which unlock individual episodes, cost from around $4.99 to $24.99. The store also lists a separate Premium tier at about $4.99 to $9.99, which gives lighter viewers cheaper entry points than the full pass. The figure on your own screen may be different, as prices change by country, platform and promotion. Like its rivals’ plans, the weekly subscription auto-renews until you cancel it. Do the arithmetic before you commit, because four renewals of a $19.99 weekly pass add up to around $80 a month.

The Terms Worth Reading Before You Pay

My Drama’s terms of use contain fine print that deserves more attention than most viewers give it. Coin purchases are final, so there is no easy refund if a series disappoints after you unlock it. Coins are also forfeited after 12 months of inactivity, which means a balance you ignore for a year can simply disappear. Web purchases are labeled non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise. In line with the consumer rules in those markets, viewers in the EU and UK have a 14-day right of withdrawal. Crucially, 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 use the Subscriptions menu in Google Play. For store purchases, refunds are processed by Apple or Google, not by Holywater.

It also pays to know exactly who stands on the other side of the contract. XOLY LIMITED, a Delaware company, covers US users, whereas everyone else contracts with Holy Water Limited in Nicosia, Cyprus. As with any vertical drama app, one more warning applies here. Modded APKs, unlimited coins and free coin generators are promised by unofficial sites, and those sites are not a safe way to watch anything. The proper move to a steep price is to cancel the pass, not to look for a hack.

Verdict: A Challenger With Hollywood on Its Side

On install counts, My Drama is not the largest vertical drama app, and it is not even close. What it has instead is an unusual mix: 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. For viewers, the practical upside is Apple TV support, which ReelShort, for one, does not list. The drawback remains the same one that dogs every rival: a weekly pass of about $19.99 that quietly renews in the background. If you simply want the largest claimed library, ShortMax, with its 50,000+ dramas, is the more obvious choice. The My Drama app earns a place on your home screen if you want Fox-produced romance and the option to watch on a television. Whatever you decide, never rely on the delete button: create a reminder the day you subscribe and cancel through your store account.