EXCLUSIVE: Succession star Sarah Snook and Game of Thrones actors Maisie Williams, Liam Cunningham, Iain Glen and Kit Harington are making their microdrama debuts.
Vertical video platform Snips is adapting series that each actor or actress has starred in for the new medium, as the platform continues to seek films and TV shows to repurpose in 9:16 ratio.
The show are Australian drama The Beautiful Lie, an ABC series starring Snook; Sky dark comedy Two Weeks to Live, starring Williams and Sian Clifford (Ludwig); Rome drama Domina, starring Cunningham; BBC drama Prisoners’ Wives, starring Glen, and BBC and HBO co-production Gunpowder, starring Harrington.
Each show will be transformed from its full-length format into 45-second to two-minute episodes.
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The Beautiful Lie debuted on ABC in Australia in 2017 as a modern reimagining of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, with Snook (known best as Succession‘s Shiv Roy) playing a retired tennis champion married to another tennis legend, who flies home to help her brother’s crumbling marriage, only to meet and feel an instant attraction to a charismatic music producer – who happens to be the brother of her sister-in-law.
Two Weeks to Live debuted on Sky in the UK in 2020, and follows Williams as a young woman on a secret mission to avenge her father’s mysterious death when she was a child, who along with her mother joins a pair of socially awkward brothers and goes on the run from murderous gangsters and the police. It was Williams’ first lead role after her run as Arya Stark in GOT.
Domina, another Sky show, debuted in 2021, when Cunningham playing the father of young Livia Drusilla (Kasia Smutniak), whose lose of her family sets her on a path to seizing power in Rome. Isabella Rossellini and Claire Forlani joined Cunningham, who played Ser Davos Seaworth in GOT.
Glen stars in Prisoners’ Wives, a two-season BBC drama from the early 2010s. The show follows the wives, girlfriends and partners of prisoners, with Glen playing a career criminal whose lavish lifestyle is running out, along with his money. Polly Walker (Rome); another GOT star, David Bradley; and a yyoung Phoebe Dyvenor (Bridgerton) also had roles in an ensemble cast.
Gunpowder, a miniseries from 2017, was set in 1603 with Harington playing Robert Catesby, a charismatic Catholic nobleman, who decides to blow up the Houses of Parliament with the King inside. Harington who starred as Jon Snow in GOT, is a real-life descendant of Catesby, and lead a cast also including Liv Tyler (The Lord of the Rings), Mark Gatiss (Sherlock) and Peter Mullan (My Name is Joe).
Snips model
Snips has sought to set itself apart from other microdrama apps by focusing on repurposing existing shows and films for the vertical space, rather than making its own originals.
“Viewing habits are changing, and people’s preferences are changing with them,” said Or Ben Shimon, co-founder and CEO of Snips. “That shift is exactly why the micro-drama industry has exploded the way it has. Now we’re seeing big-name actors get into the space, and that tells you everything about where this format is headed. We believe good shows are like music — they just need to be on the most modern format.”
Snips has been offering rights owners a revenue-share model that allows earnings to grow based on performance over the more traditional flat license fee agreement. Shimon believes this gives actors a direct stake in their titles’ performance, incentivizing them to promote the work to fans and followers.
Shimon is set to hit MIPCOM Cannes next week, meeting with sellers and content owners to acquire more titles for adaptation.
