A Kyiv Studio Puts Its Bet on the Vertical Drama
Holywater didn’t begin its life as a TV business. In 2020 Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov founded the company in Kyiv, Ukraine, and its portfolio to this day reads more like a mobile entertainment laboratory than a streaming platform. My Passion handles books, My Muse is for AI, and FreeBits completes the family next to My Drama. It matters that the portfolio is this broad, because it reveals a company that treats video as one of several consumer products rather than its whole identity. Eventually, the company wagered on the vertical drama, a format that originated in China as duanju and is shot 9:16 for an upright phone. The groups behind drama story the category’s largest players were Chinese and Singaporean, making this a bold market for a small Ukrainian firm to enter.
The My Drama App Launches in Spring 2024
In spring 2024, the My Drama app debuted, although the precise date hinges on which source you trust. Google Play lists March 13, 2024, the App Store shows May 9, 2024, and TechCrunch placed the launch in April. The difference between those store dates indicates that Android came first and the iPhone version came about two months later. The first slate leaned into the genre’s favorite 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 just by their names. The studio was eventually set apart not by the stories themselves but by the partner it would soon be producing them with.
The Fox Deal, a $22M Round and a Webby
The month My Drama stopped being a startup curiosity was October 2025. An equity stake in Holywater was taken by Fox Entertainment, and the agreement came with a pledge to produce more than 200 vertical titles over two years. Fox-produced titles on the service include Billionaire Blackmail, Bound by Obsession and My Heart’s Offside. A $22M funding round led by Horizon Capital came three months later, in January 2026, when Holywater raised the money. In its App Store listing, the company displays another credential: a Webby Award for Best Streaming Service from 2025. Put together, those milestones give My Drama something few rivals can match, namely a major American studio working as both shareholder and producer.
My Drama at a Glance
The table below gives the quick version of the story if you only have a minute. The ownership, legal, platform and pricing details that matter most to a first-time viewer are collected in one place. Prices are the ones displayed in the US App Store as of September 2026. Treat them as a guide rather than a quote, as they differ by country, platform and promotion. The install figure refers to Google Play, where the app displays 5M+ downloads. The legal entity you contract with depends on where you live, which becomes relevant if you ever need to contest a charge.
| Topic | Specifics |
|---|---|
| Owned by | 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 |
| Legal entity for US users | XOLY LIMITED (Delaware) |
| Contracting entity, other users | Holy Water Limited (Nicosia, Cyprus) |
| Launch | Spring 2024 (Google Play: March 13; App Store: May 9) |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Android, Apple TV (tvOS 18+), Vision Pro and web |
| Installs on Android | 5M+ via Google Play |
| Full-access plan | About $19.99 per week, auto-renewing |
| Coin packs | Around $4.99 to $24.99 |
| Premium tier | Around $4.99 to $9.99 |
| Production partner | Fox Entertainment, equity stake held since October 2025, 200+ titles over two years |
| Latest funding | $22M in January 2026, led by Horizon Capital |
| Honors | Webby Award for Best Streaming Service, 2025 |
What It Feels Like to Watch My Drama
At its core, the experience is the same one the whole category is built on. Episodes are vertical, sized for a phone held upright, and in this genre they usually last a minute or two before a cliffhanger nudges you toward the next one. Series often run anywhere from 20 to 100 episodes, so a single story can quietly eat up an evening in short bites. This drama app truly sets itself apart in the range of screens it supports. It is listed for Apple TV on tvOS 18 or later and for Vision Pro, in addition to iPhone, iPad and Android. That big-screen option is less common than you might expect: by comparison, ReelShort’s App Store listing shows no Apple TV version at all. The option converts a solo phone habit into something a couple can watch together, even though a 9:16 frame will never fill a widescreen TV.
Holywater’s own early productions and the growing Fox slate make up the catalog, which blends the two. The genre’s familiar formula remains the template for the Fox releases, as titles like Billionaire Blackmail and Bound by Obsession make plain. Scale is where the candid caveat comes in. At 5M+ installs on Google Play, the app has a fraction of the 100M+ that ReelShort, DramaBox and ShortMax each list. That gap puts My Drama in 2026 as a well-funded challenger rather than the category leader.
Pricing: What My Drama Costs in 2026
Access is sold in three ways, and the headline figure is the weekly pass. “My Drama: Full Access” runs around $19.99 a week in the US App Store as of September 2026. That puts it in line with the weekly passes from ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave and GoodShort, each listed at about the same price in the same store. From roughly $4.99 to $24.99, coin bundles unlock individual episodes. Lighter viewers have less expensive entry points than the full pass, as a separate Premium tier is listed at around $4.99 to $9.99. Like its rivals’ plans, the weekly subscription renews automatically until you cancel it. Prices change by country, platform and promotion, so the figure on your own screen may differ. Before you commit, do the math: four renewals of a $19.99 weekly pass come to around $80 a month.
Terms to Know Before You Pay
The fine print in My Drama’s terms of use warrants more attention than most viewers give it. Since coin purchases are final, there is no easy refund if a series lets you down after you unlock it. A balance you ignore for a year can simply disappear, because coins are forfeited after 12 months of inactivity. Purchases made on the web are labeled non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise. A 14-day right of withdrawal covers viewers in the EU and UK, reflecting the consumer rules in those markets. The most important point is this: the terms state plainly 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. Apple or Google, not Holywater, handle refunds for store purchases.
It is also wise to know exactly who sits on the other side of the contract. XOLY LIMITED, a Delaware company, handles US users, whereas everyone else contracts with Holy Water Limited in Nicosia, Cyprus. As with any vertical drama app, a further warning applies here. Modded APKs, unlimited coins and free coin generators come from unofficial sites, and those sites are not a safe way to watch anything. When the price seems steep, the legal move is to cancel the pass, not to go hunting for a hack.
Verdict: The Challenger With Hollywood in Its Corner
My Drama is not the biggest vertical drama app, and judging by install counts it is not close. Rather, it offers an uncommon 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. Viewers get a practical advantage in Apple TV support, which ReelShort, for one, does not list. A weekly pass of roughly $19.99 that renews quietly in the background is the drawback, the same one that plagues every rival. If the largest claimed library is simply what you want, ShortMax, with its 50,000+ dramas, is the more obvious pick. The My Drama app deserves a place on your home screen if you want Fox-produced romance and the option to watch on a television. Either way, create a reminder the day you subscribe, and cancel through your store account rather than trusting the delete button.