The Vertical Drama Bet of a Kyiv Studio
At first, Holywater was not a television business. Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov founded the studio in 2020 in Kyiv, Ukraine, and its range of products to this day reads more like a mobile entertainment lab than a streaming service. My Passion handles books, My Muse is for AI, and FreeBits rounds out the set beside My Drama. That spread is important, as it reveals a company that regards video as one consumer product among several rather than its entire identity. The www.reelshorts.org/trope/secret-heiress vertical drama, a format born in China as duanju and framed 9:16 for an upright phone, was the bet it eventually made. 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.
Spring 2024: The My Drama App Hits the Stores
The My Drama app arrived in spring 2024, though the precise date hinges on which listing you trust. Google Play lists March 13, 2024, the App Store shows May 9, 2024, and TechCrunch placed the launch in April. Those store dates suggest that Android launched first, with the iPhone version arriving about two months later. The opening slate was heavily built around the genre’s go-to tropes. Early titles such as The Shy Beauty and the Billionaire Beast and Love Captive to a Mafia Boss reveal most of what you need to know about the tone through their names alone. The collaborator it would soon be producing them with, not the stories themselves, is what eventually set the company apart.
Fox, $22M in Fresh Funding and a Webby Win
My Drama ceased to be a startup curiosity in October 2025. Under a deal that came with a pledge to make more than 200 vertical titles over two years, Fox Entertainment acquired 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 among the Fox-produced titles on the platform. The company also has a 2025 Webby Award for Best Streaming Service, a credential it displays on its App Store listing. Few rivals can boast what those milestones give My Drama, 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. Prices are the ones displayed in the US App Store as of September 2026. They vary by country, platform and promotion, so treat them as a rough guide rather than a quote. The install figure refers to Google Play, where the app lists 5M+ downloads. Which legal entity you deal with depends on where you live, a point that is relevant if you ever need to contest a charge.
| Topic | Details |
|---|---|
| Parent company | Holywater (founded in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2020) |
| Founded by | Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov |
| Sister apps | My Passion for books, My Muse for AI, plus FreeBits |
| Contract party, US users | XOLY LIMITED (Delaware) |
| Legal entity for other users | Holy Water Limited (Nicosia, Cyprus) |
| Release | Spring 2024 (Google Play on March 13; App Store on May 9) |
| Supported platforms | iPhone, iPad, Android, Apple TV (tvOS 18+), Vision Pro and web |
| Android installs | Google Play: 5M+ |
| Full-access pass | About $19.99 a week, auto-renewing |
| Coin packs | Around $4.99 to $24.99 |
| Premium plans | About $4.99 to $9.99 |
| Studio backer | Fox Entertainment, equity stake held since October 2025, 200+ titles over two years |
| Latest funding | $22M raised in January 2026, led by Horizon Capital |
| Recognition | Webby Award for Best Streaming Service, 2025 |
What Watching on My Drama Feels Like
The central experience is the one the entire category is built on. Episodes are vertical, sized for a phone held upright, and in this genre they generally run a minute or two before a cliffhanger propels 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. What truly sets this drama app apart is the range of screens it supports. It is listed for Apple TV on tvOS 18 or later and for Vision Pro, beyond iPhone, iPad and Android. ReelShort’s App Store listing, for comparison, shows no Apple TV version at all, which underlines that that big-screen option is less common 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 watch together.
Holywater’s own early productions and the growing Fox slate share the library, which blends the two. As titles like Billionaire Blackmail and Bound by Obsession make clear, the Fox releases stay close to the genre’s familiar formula. Scale is where the fair caveat comes in. At 5M+ installs on Google Play, the app has a small fraction of the 100M+ that ReelShort, DramaBox and ShortMax each show. This gap places My Drama in 2026 as a well-funded challenger rather than the category leader.
Pricing: How Much My Drama Costs in 2026
Of the three ways Holywater sells access, the weekly pass is the main figure. In the US App Store as of September 2026, “My Drama: Full Access” runs roughly $19.99 a week. ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave and GoodShort list their weekly passes at about the same price in the same store, so My Drama sits level with them. Coin bundles, which unlock individual episodes, run from around $4.99 to $24.99. A separate Premium tier is listed at around $4.99 to $9.99, so lighter viewers have cheaper entry points than the full pass. Like its rivals’ plans, the weekly subscription renews automatically until you cancel it. Because prices vary by country, platform and promotion, the figure on your own screen may be different. Four renewals of a $19.99 weekly pass total roughly $80 a month, so run the numbers before you commit.
Terms to Check Before You Pay
Most viewers give less attention than they should to the fine print in My Drama’s terms of use. Since coin purchases are final, there is no easy refund if a series lets you down after you unlock it. On top of that, coins are forfeited after 12 months of inactivity, so a balance you ignore for a year can simply vanish. Viewers in the EU and UK receive a 14-day right of withdrawal, in line with the consumer rules in those markets. Except where the law requires otherwise, purchases made on the web are described as non-refundable. The most important point of all: the terms state plainly that deleting the app does not cancel your subscription. iPhone owners cancel under Settings, then their name, then Subscriptions, while Android users use the Subscriptions menu in Google Play. Refunds for store purchases are handled by Apple or Google, not by Holywater.
It is also useful to know exactly who stands on the other side of the contract. Everyone outside the US contracts with Holy Water Limited in Nicosia, Cyprus, while US users deal with XOLY LIMITED, a Delaware company. One more warning applies here as much as to any vertical drama app. Sites offering modded APKs, unlimited coins or free coin generators are unofficial and are not a safe way to watch anything. If the price seems too high, the proper move is to cancel the pass, not to look for a hack.
Verdict: The Challenger With Hollywood in Its Corner
On install counts, My Drama is not even close to being the largest vertical drama app. 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 make up the uncommon combination it offers instead. For viewers there is a practical upside in Apple TV support, which ReelShort, for one, does not list. Like every rival, the downside is a weekly pass of around $19.99 that renews quietly in the background. If you want Fox-produced romance and the option to watch on a TV, the My Drama app earns a place on your home screen. If you simply want the largest claimed library, ShortMax, with its 50,000+ dramas, is the more obvious pick. In both cases, create a reminder on the day you subscribe and cancel through your store account rather than trusting the delete button.
