Hollywood Producer Tommy Harper Is Betting Big on Micro Drama — and He Wants to Be Its HBO

The franchise film veteran behind Star Wars and Top Gun: Maverick is launching VeYou, a new micro drama app backed by the founder of Google Ventures.

The micro drama space has a new name-brand believer, and he comes from about as far up the Hollywood food chain as it gets.

Tommy Harper — whose producer credits include Star Wars and Top Gun: Maverick, films that have collectively grossed more than $4 billion at the global box office — has quietly been building something smaller. Much smaller. His new venture, VeYou, is a mobile micro drama app designed to do what few platforms in the space have attempted: bring genuine production quality and storytelling ambition to a format that has largely been defined by its roughness.

Harper raised an undisclosed seed round from lead investor S32, the venture firm founded by Bill Maris, who previously founded Google Ventures and has backed companies including 23andMe, Impossible Foods, and Nest. VeYou has secured distribution on Google TV and Google Play, with iOS to follow, and plans to use TikTok and Meta channels for audience development.

A format in search of a quality standard

Harper is entering a market that is large, fast-growing, and still figuring itself out. Streaming consulting firm Owl & Co. estimates that micro dramas generated $1.4 billion in revenue in the United States in 2025 alone, with global projections pointing toward a $26 billion industry by 2030. The format has drawn attention from Fox Entertainment, which invested in Ukrainian micro drama app My Drama, and Disney, which gave micro drama platform DramaBox a spot in its accelerator program.

But Harper's pitch deck — shared exclusively with Business Insider — does not shy away from the format's image problem. The deck notes that 57% of viewers say there is too much violence in the space, and that social sharing remains low because of stigma. Harper sees the gap between what the format currently delivers and what audiences actually want as his entry point.

VeYou's content strategy spans action, romance, and drama, mixing licensed titles with originals produced through Harper's own studio, Tiny Verticals. The first original is Love Under Fire, an action romance starring vertical drama actor Kasey Esser, who co-wrote the series with Harper. Production budgets will run between $100,000 and $250,000 per series — modest by traditional standards, premium by vertical ones. Pricing will be $4.99 per licensed series and $10.99 for originals, with advertising and additional payment options planned.

AI-assisted production is central to the VeYou model, with the platform planning to use scene analytics to inform marketing, UX decisions, and future greenlight calls. Breakout properties are envisioned as potential franchise IP, with expansion paths into film, television, and books.

Competing against deep pockets

Harper is clear-eyed about the competitive landscape. The dominant players in micro drama are well-funded Chinese companies with significant marketing infrastructure and content libraries. User acquisition costs remain one of the format's most stubborn challenges — productions are cheap to make but expensive to find an audience for.

His strategy leans on talent with existing social followings to reduce paid marketing dependency, and he is in active discussions with brands about sponsored vertical content that incorporates product placement as a funding mechanism.

He also sees micro drama as a meaningful employment pipeline for a generation of below-the-line and on-screen talent being squeezed out of traditional film and television.

A familiar pattern

Harper's move into vertical content echoes a dynamic the industry has seen before. He noted that he received skeptical reactions when he moved into television from features — pushback that, in retrospect, looks shortsighted. He expects similar skepticism about micro drama to fade as more recognized names bring their credibility to the format.

For a space that has long operated on the margins of mainstream industry attention, Harper's entry — and the institutional backing behind it — is exactly the kind of signal that tends to shift perception. Whether VeYou can deliver on its quality ambitions at scale remains to be seen. But the bet is now on the table.