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How a Kyiv Studio Wagered on the Vertical Drama

Television wasn’t how Holywater started out. The company was established in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2020 by Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov, and its product lineup even now looks more like a mobile entertainment lab than a streaming network. Next to My Drama sit My Passion for books, My Muse for AI and FreeBits. That breadth is telling: it points to a business for which video is one of several consumer products, not its whole identity. In the end, Worthless to Priceless: The Alpha’s Rejected Mate full episodes Holywater bet on the vertical drama, a format that originated in China as duanju and is framed 9:16 for an upright phone. The groups behind the sector’s largest players were Chinese and Singaporean, which made this a daring market for a small Ukrainian firm to enter.

The My Drama App Launches in Spring 2024

The exact launch date of the My Drama app depends on which record you believe, but it went live in spring 2024. Google Play lists March 13, 2024, the App Store shows May 9, 2024, and TechCrunch dated the launch in April. The difference between those store dates suggests that Android came first and the iPhone version arrived about two months later. The genre’s best-loved tropes shaped the first 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 mood. It was not the stories themselves that eventually set the company apart, but the partner it would soon be producing them with.

A Fox Deal, a $22M Raise and a Webby

October 2025 was the month My Drama ceased to be a startup curiosity. An equity stake in Holywater was taken by Fox Entertainment, and the deal carried a commitment to produce more than 200 vertical titles over two years. Fox-produced titles on the app include Billionaire Blackmail, Bound by Obsession and My Heart’s Offside. Then, in January 2026, three months on, Holywater secured $22M in a round led by Horizon Capital. The company also has a Webby Award for Best Streaming Service from 2025, an honor it displays on its App Store listing. Taken together, those milestones hand My Drama something few rivals can boast, namely a major American studio working as both shareholder and producer.

My Drama at a Glance

For anyone who only has a minute, the table below gives the condensed version of the story. It gathers in one place the details on ownership, legal matters, platforms and pricing that matter most to a first-time viewer. The prices are the ones listed in the US App Store as of September 2026. They differ by country, platform and promotion, so treat them as a rough guide rather than a firm quote. The app shows 5M+ downloads on Google Play, which is the store the install count refers to. Which legal entity you contract with is determined by where you live, a point that becomes relevant if you ever need to contest a charge.

What It Feels Like to Watch My Drama

The whole category is built on this same basic experience, and My Drama sticks to it. Episodes are vertical, formatted for an upright phone, and in this genre they usually last a minute or two before a cliffhanger pushes you toward the next one. Since series often run anywhere from 20 to 100 episodes, a single story can silently consume an evening in short bites. The range of screens it supports is where this drama app truly distinguishes itself. Beyond iPhone, iPad and Android, it is listed for Apple TV on tvOS 18 or later and for Vision Pro. ReelShort’s App Store listing, for comparison, shows no Apple TV version at all, which shows that this big-screen option is less common than you might expect. The option turns a solo phone habit into something a couple can enjoy together, even though a 9:16 frame will never fill a widescreen television.

On the content side, the catalog blends Holywater’s own early productions with the growing Fox slate. The genre’s familiar formula remains the template for the Fox releases, as titles like Billionaire Blackmail and Bound by Obsession make clear. Scale is where the candid caveat comes in. The app displays 5M+ installs on Google Play, a fraction of the 100M+ that ReelShort, DramaBox and ShortMax each show. That gap tells you where My Drama sits in 2026: a well-funded challenger rather than the category leader.

Pricing: How Much My Drama Costs in 2026

Access is sold in three ways, and the headline figure is the weekly pass. As of September 2026, the US App Store prices “My Drama: Full Access” at about $19.99 a week. The weekly passes from ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave and GoodShort are listed at about the same price in the same store, which places My Drama on par with them. To unlock individual episodes, there are coin packs priced from about $4.99 to $24.99. The store also lists a separate Premium tier at about $4.99 to $9.99, giving lighter viewers lower-cost entry points than the full pass. The figure on your own screen may differ, as prices vary by country, platform and promotion. Just as with its rivals’ plans, the weekly subscription auto-renews until you cancel it. Before committing, do the math: four renewals of a $19.99 weekly pass total roughly $80 a month.

Terms to Read Before You Pay

My Drama’s terms of use include fine print that deserves more attention than most viewers give it. All coin purchase is final, which means no easy refund if a series disappoints after you unlock it. A balance you ignore for a year can simply vanish, since coins are forfeited after 12 months of inactivity. Except where the law requires otherwise, purchases made on the web are labeled non-refundable. Viewers in the EU and UK have a 14-day right of withdrawal, reflecting the consumer rules in those markets. Deleting the app does not cancel your subscription, and the terms state this plainly, which is the most important point of all. 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 handled by Apple or Google, not by Holywater.

It also helps to know exactly who sits on the other side of the contract. If you are in the US, the counterparty is XOLY LIMITED, a Delaware company; everyone else contracts with Holy Water Limited in Nicosia, Cyprus. One more warning applies here as much as to any vertical drama app. Modded APKs, unlimited coins and free coin generators are promised by unofficial sites, and those sites are not a safe way to watch anything. When the price feels steep, the legal move is to cancel the pass, not to go hunting for a hack.

Verdict: A Challenger With Hollywood in Its Corner

On install counts, My Drama is not even close to being the biggest vertical drama app. What it offers instead is an unusual combination: a Kyiv founding story, a Fox equity partner signed up for more than 200 titles, fresh funding from January 2026 and a Webby on the shelf. ReelShort, for one, does not list Apple TV support, which makes it the practical upside for My Drama viewers. The catch is the same one that plagues every rival, namely a weekly pass of roughly $19.99 that renews quietly in the background. If the largest claimed library is simply what you want, ShortMax, with its 50,000+ dramas, is the more obvious pick. For Fox-produced romance and the option to watch on a TV, the My Drama app deserves a place on your home screen. Whichever you pick, cancel through your store account rather than trusting the delete button, and set a reminder the day you subscribe.