A Kyiv Studio Wagers on the Vertical Drama

Holywater wasn’t founded as a television operation. The business was founded in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2020 by Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov, and its range of products to this day reads more like a mobile entertainment laboratory than a streaming platform. My Passion is for books, My Muse handles drama box AI, and FreeBits rounds out the set beside My Drama. It is telling that the portfolio is this broad, since it reveals a company that treats video as one of several consumer products instead of its entire identity. The bet it ultimately made was on the vertical drama, a format that began 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 bold market for a small Ukrainian company to enter.

Spring 2024 and the Arrival of the My Drama App

Spring 2024 brought the debut of the My Drama app, 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 suggests, with the iPhone version arriving about two months later. The opening slate leaned into the genre’s favorite tropes. Most of what you need to know about the style comes through in early titles such as The Shy Beauty and the Billionaire Beast and Love Captive to a Mafia Boss. The studio was eventually set apart not by the stories themselves but by the collaborator it would soon be making them with.

The Fox Deal, a $22M Round and a Webby

October 2025 was the month My Drama stopped being a startup curiosity. Under a deal that came with a commitment to make more than 200 vertical titles over two years, Fox Entertainment took an equity stake in Holywater. A $22M funding round led by Horizon Capital came three months later, in January 2026, when Holywater raised the money. Billionaire Blackmail, Bound by Obsession and My Heart’s Offside are some of the Fox-produced titles on the platform. The company also holds a Webby Award for Best Streaming Service from 2025, an honor it features on its App Store listing. Taken together, those milestones hand My Drama something few rivals can claim, namely a major American studio acting as both shareholder and producer.

The My Drama Fact File

The table below is the short version of the story if you only have a minute. First-time viewers will find the ownership, legal, platform and pricing details that matter most to them collected here. The prices reflect the US App Store as of September 2026. Because they vary by country, platform and promotion, treat them as a guide rather than a quote. The install count is taken from Google Play, where the app displays 5M+ downloads. Which legal entity you contract with depends on where you live, a point that becomes relevant if you ever need to contest a charge.

What Watching on My Drama Feels Like

The whole category is built on the same basic experience, and My Drama follows it. Episodes are vertical, formatted for an upright phone, and in this genre they generally run a minute or two before a cliffhanger nudges you on to the next one. A single story can silently swallow an evening in short bites, since series often run anywhere from 20 to 100 episodes. Where this drama app really sets itself apart is the range of screens it supports. On top of iPhone, iPad and Android, the app is listed for Apple TV on tvOS 18 or later and for Vision Pro. By comparison, ReelShort’s App Store listing shows no Apple TV version at all, so this big-screen option is rarer than you might expect. A 9:16 frame will never fill a widescreen TV, but the option converts a solo phone habit into something a couple can enjoy together.

The growing Fox slate sits alongside Holywater’s own early productions in the catalog. As titles like Billionaire Blackmail and Bound by Obsession make clear, the Fox releases stick close to the genre’s familiar formula. Scale is the candid caveat here. The app displays 5M+ installs on Google Play, a fraction of the 100M+ that ReelShort, DramaBox and ShortMax each list. This gap shows where My Drama stands in 2026, as a well-backed challenger rather than the category leader.

Pricing: What My Drama Costs in 2026

Holywater sells access in three ways, and the key figure is the weekly pass. « My Drama: Full Access » costs around $19.99 a week in the US App Store as of September 2026. ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave and GoodShort list their weekly passes at about the same price in the same store, so the app is level with them. For unlocking individual episodes, there are coin packs running from about $4.99 to $24.99. There is also a separate Premium tier at around $4.99 to $9.99, giving lighter viewers cheaper entry points than the full pass. Like its rivals’ plans, the weekly subscription auto-renews until you cancel it. As prices differ by country, platform and promotion, the figure on your own device may differ. Run the numbers first: at four renewals, a $19.99 weekly pass comes to about $80 a month.

Terms Worth Knowing Before You Pay

The terms of use for My Drama contain fine print that deserves more attention than most viewers give it. Because coin purchases are final, there is no easy refund if a series lets you down after you unlock it. Coins are also forfeited after 12 months of inactivity, which means a balance you ignore for a year can simply vanish. Except where the law requires otherwise, purchases made on the web are labeled non-refundable. A 14-day right of withdrawal applies to viewers in the EU and UK, reflecting the consumer rules in those markets. Most important of all, the terms make it clear that deleting the app does not cancel your subscription. On an iPhone you cancel under Settings, then your name, then Subscriptions, while Android users go through the Subscriptions menu in Google Play. For store purchases, refunds are processed by Apple or Google, not by Holywater.

It is also wise to know exactly who stands on the other side of the contract. XOLY LIMITED, a Delaware company, covers US users, while 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 come from unofficial sites, and those sites are not a safe way to watch anything. If the price feels steep, cancel the pass; do not hunt for a hack.

Our Verdict: A Challenger With Hollywood in Its Corner

My Drama is not the largest vertical drama app, and going by install counts it is not 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. The practical upside for viewers is Apple TV support, something ReelShort, for one, does not list. The catch is the same one that affects every rival, namely a weekly pass of roughly $19.99 that renews quietly in the background. Viewers who want Fox-produced romance and the option to watch on a television will find that the My Drama app earns a place on the home screen. If the largest claimed library is simply what you want, ShortMax, with its 50,000+ dramas, is the more obvious choice. Either way, create a reminder the day you subscribe, and cancel through your store account rather than trusting the delete button.