Screenwriting : What does everyone think about liminted series vs. feature film? by D A Stenard

How about vertical films ? Ask her that? This is the next wave!!

I'd question the knowledge, aptitude, and access a person being so dogmatic truly has to make a comment like that. The tone is a huge red flag that someone is operating off gossip rather than experience.

Behind Her Eyes is going gangbusters on Netflix.

Unless this person is financing your project, it's just an opinion. If you spoke to 3 different distribution companies and asked about what is selling, they'd all give you different opinions.

Hey, D A Stenard. I agree with what everyone said. If you think your feature script would be better as a limited series, I say try it. And from what I've been hearing and seeing, limited series are popular.

As William Goldman famously said, no one knows anything. I love SHORT limited series, like Adolescence. When short is code for probably won't sell for a second season, not so much.

Ron - Where should show it? vertical video

I loved that series, CJ Walley . Loved the ending. Caught me completely off guard.

I'd question anyone who denigrates others. It's self-serving, and nasty dogma.

Paul Sokal posted the right quote, "No one knows anything."

I agree with everyone else. Write your vision in the format where you feel it belongs, and test the waters. You can always adapt it to another length/output later if it really does fall flat.

There was a quite substantial over saturation of limited series in the last 5 years. Every streamer went mad producing them and flooded the market with them all at the same time, which leads to fatigue somewhat and leads to lowered demand. This is likely what the person you mentioned is hinting at. Most of the time limited series are expensive and plays made by streamers to build their libraries of original content, but they are also useful star vehicles to keep buzzy talent working on projects that excite them while their teams put together their next big hit. Everything is cyclical. I wouldn't be dissuaded by this person's (albeit correct) view of the market right now. No one may want them right now, but that could change in a year or two. Write your limited series if that's the format that fits your story best. Your story as a feature or ongoing series won't be as good if it's in the form it's not meant to be in.

If it doesn’t have a multi series Engine, Make it a feature

I say go with your gut! If a limited series feels right to you, then you could also toy with the idea of it being an anthology, and come up with some separate but connected ideas if someone wanted more than one season.

Such a comment may well reflect that person's own fear of rejection or disappointment, of perhaps this, or something similar, happening in their own exlerience. Whether or not, it's disparaging, which is not on, coming from an 'expert'.

My recent pitch submission received a sumilar comment, suggesting that i forget it, the notion of such an expensive movie ever being produced.

Yes, it,'s important to be open & flexible, yet it's vital that we adhere to our unique visions. Balance.

True Detective and Fargo now spring to mind as I read some of these comments - they were expensive but stunning. Food for thought. As ever, it’s all about story anyway.

D A Stenard LIMITED SERIES ARE DEAD => FALSE

I watch them all the time!

So even though we talked about this, just chiming in for everyone else. 1. What you are talking about is technically a mini-series not a limited series (small number of episodes and no option for a season two). 2. The person you asked is actually kind of an expert so they aren't trying to be denigrating or anything, though I hope their tone was a bit more conciliatory than that. [This person was not me! :)] 3. Pat Alexander is right on the money! I absolutely agree with that assessment. 4. Having said that, films are getting made a bit more right now so giving this some thought from a creative standpoint is worthwhile. If your project is largely a single storyline that is plot driven, i.e. events in the arc of a life, has a relatively contained world and cast, and is powered by a central dramatic question, i.e. a "quest" with a solid end point, a feature format is worth considering.

I got back the results from one of my written pitches yesterday (I was pitching a feature) and the feedback implied that while it was too large in scope to be sellable as a feature for that particular exec, they recommended I consider re-imagining it as a limited series, so I'd say no, limited series aren't dead.

I’ve heard that take too that limited series are dead. Honestly, I’m not sure what to think about the industry anymore. There’s a new shift every week reboots, trends, algorithm changes it’s a lot. But I feel like the whole “limited series is dead” thing says more about what networks are prioritizing right now than what audiences actually want. Great stories still connect. If it’s emotionally charged, visually distinct, and culturally alive, it finds its way. For me, it’s never the format that kills a project it’s the execution. If your story has truth, pace, creative intent, and the right support behind it, it can live as a limited series, a feature, or even something in between. What the industry calls dead often just needs a smarter pitch or a different platform. Before shelving it, ask yourself why it should exist not how long it runs. That’s what gives it value. Also whatever happened to calling them Mini-Series? One of my favourite thing to do when I was growing up was to look forward to watching Mini-Series.

I had never considered any format other than a feature film until my most recent project. After completing the first 120 pages of the draft, I realized that the story was rushed, the character development was shallow, and the full emotional impact of the act two climax was shortchanged because I had to compress too much exposition and world building into act one. If I wrote this as a pilot for an 8-part limited series, and sketched episodes 2-8 from my feature script, it solved a lot of these problems.

The decision was made based on what was best for the story, not what would engage viewer's eyeballs for the maximum amount of advertising time. My story was not open-ended in its current form. I feel it is an imposition on viewer's to demand they spend 10 hours of their lives over multiple seasons on any particular story just to optimize their monetizaton value. When I watch a multi-season series, I watch the pilot, second to last, and last episodes only, relying on the recaps to fill in the gaps. Most of the second act is padded with character arc storylines that don't contribute to the narrative drive and waste my time.

Multi-season series are also killing the development of new show runners and producers according to industry insiders. Episodic series writers used to get experience on-set and learned the show runner craft over time. Now, they are hired for a writer's room, dumped for two or more years until the next season goes into production, and then expected to drop whatever they may be doing to rejoin the show's writer's room. Most move on, causing a loss of consistency between seasons.

The latest trend to mimic the Chinese micro-drama or "vertical" fad is extremely profitable and a cultural disaster. A 90 minute low budget feature that costs $200,000 can be broken into sixty 90 second episodes at 99 cents per episode ($60) and viewed by 10 million people ($600M). These are independently produced and distributed via ReelShort, DramaBox, and GoodShort platforms.

If serialization is wasting people's lives, micro-dramas take this to a new level of brain-rot. If you want a career as a screenwriter, this is your ticket. If you care about story and craft and having an impact with your work, I would avoid this soap-opera black hole.

D A Stenard a very valid concern and happy to see you're getting some really solid viewpoints here. The format IS important and different formats allow you to come at your story in different ways - in fact, you may discover things about it that will be useful no matter what format you decide on. Also, a great story can always be adapted to other formats. I would always err on the side of seeing what the story needs, not what I want to write necessarily - 'form follows function' is a helpful standard and the generous insight from Anna Marton Henry and Pat is spot on. Look forward to seeing you rock this story! :)

D A Stenard I've written both to some degree of success and find both rewarding. The limited series is a bit more work in my opinion as mine was a lot of research on a real person

Episodic continuation is hard when big money throws the writers away.

David B. Wright Here are some stats for you to consider for micro dramas. They had a proven record of success in China. Of course, Hollywood wouldn’t be experimenting if it wasn’t seeing the dollar signs. Under the current “freemium” model of many verticals platforms, viewers can watch the first few “episodes” (often one- to three-minute segments) of a vertical for free and then can pay or watch ads to see the rest. Budgets for these projects are minuscule (generally, $100,000 to $300,000 per series), and platforms release a lot of them, experimenting to see what resonates with viewers.

According to Owl & Co, verticals are set to make more than $3 billion outside China this year. A separate analysis from SensorTower found that the U.S. is the market that generates the most revenue for verticals apps, reaching nearly $350 million in the first quarter of 2025.

The ambition for Hollywood players, essentially, is to build the Netflix for vertical video and the race is on to see who will get there first. But many open questions remain, like whether established stars and filmmaking talent will be eager to jump in.

MicroCo, which has set its sights on releasing its app in the first half of 2026, plans on keeping costs low in part by retaining the microdrama tradition of working with largely unknown actors. Its projects will be budgeted at about $100,000 to $200,000 each. “We plan to go with the old adage that TV creates stars, microdramas create stars. Did I mention our budgets?” jokes CEO Winograde.

Depends on the creator. Although I feel not everything should be aimed into being a series as a source to stretch material if it can be a feature. Make it one.

I think now the Limited Series is the TV version of a prestige film because big names are seeing the Limited Series as a way to win an Emmy or a Golden Globe.

I think it depends where you are in the world - there's lots of limited series here in the UK. Still ongoing, too.

Two things: The first is how YOU feel the story SHOULD be told. What your vision of the material is. If you feel the story needs more than 2-3 hours to tell, then I would say follow your gut. If you think you can tell the story in 120 pages give or take maintaining your vision then that works as well. William Goldman famously said "No one knows anything!" and he's absolutely right. That person is one opinion in a town/industry of thousands of opinions. Agents, producers, executives, distributors, etc. all have different needs/wants.

Death By Lightning, I think, just came out recently. It was enjoyable and 4 episodes were probably the correct length, but I really missed the part of the book about the World's Fair. I have no experience in adapting a book to a screenplay, so I am not being critical; I was just disappointed that one of the most fascinating Presidential History books I have ever read was pretty much cut in half for the content of the series. That being said, it is a recent example of a mini-series coming to market.