GoodShort

GoodShort is a vertical microdrama app operated by Singapore New Reading Technology, the publisher behind the web-fiction platform GoodNovel. It entered the US market in 2023, adapting novels from its own library into one-minute episodes, and now runs in eleven languages with production teams in Los Angeles and New York. Co-founder Brenda Cheong has described the strategy as localisation over one-size-fits-all: in-house US crews, standardised script-to-post workflows, and revenue sharing with creators.

A hit remade with someone else’s face

In September 2025 GoodShort released “Straight Until He Kissed Me,” a queer romance that became one of its best-performing titles and launched the career of Evan Gambardella. Months later Gambardella found his own face on the hero of “Mafia King’s Contract Groom,” an AI-generated series on the same app that he had no part in. He was not told and not paid; his contract, he said, had no meaningful AI protections.

Asked about it by Business Insider in July 2026, a GoodShort representative said the app had acquired the series from a third-party creator, that GoodShort does not support the unauthorised use of an actor’s image, voice, or identity, and that it is working with its partners to uphold standards — the only part of the answer the company gave in its own words.

That answer — we bought it, we did not make it — is the industry’s standard defence, and the same one the apps gave actors over AI-altered promos earlier in 2026. It puts the burden on an acquisition pipeline that so far has no likeness-clearance step. GoodShort competes directly with ReelShort and MoboReels, where performers including Ashley BeLoat and Brittany Marsicek reported the same thing happening to their shows.