EXCLUSIVE: Upscale Media Films, which is making a suite of vertical shows with Hartbeat, is formally launching as a full-service production company for the microdrama market.

Malik Davis, who is Upscale’s CEO and founder, is working on a business model based around controlling a portfolio of published book properties that can be paired with a standing crew that develops, casts, shoots, edits and delivers in-house.

He said the combination will remove the two costs that typically slow adaptation – development spend and packaging spend – and works by developing stories, producing on “lean” budgets and then seeking to adapt them as longer-form titles. Upscale claims this funds and de-risks each stage of production.

This is model Upscale and Hartbeat are using for a slate of shows based on Blake Karrington book adaptations, which are for microdrama platform aTwist, as we revealed last month. Each will be considered as feature films or TV series.

Upscale is also currently in production on Exotic Foods, a ten-episode original horror anthology series produced using the company’s hybrid AI-assisted production workflow.

“I came at this from the business side, and the business side of adaptation has always been broken — you spend the money first and find out whether anyone wanted the story last,” said Davis. “So I went and secured the books first, then built the team around them. We own the pipeline end to end. That means we can move at the speed this format demands without giving up the quality a partner like Hartbeat expects.”

As we reported, Upscale is working with Karrington, an Essence bestselling novelist published by Penguin Random House and Urban Books. His novels center on urban Southern settings, Charlotte, North Carolina and the wider Deep South. Across the 20 titles set for adaptation on aTwist, the catalog has sold more than 16.5 million units and generated more than 271 million page reads.

Karrington now operates within Upscale, working directly with the company’s development team on the translation of his novels into episodic vertical form.

“My readers have been with these characters for years,” said Blake Karrington. “Humanity is everywhere,  especially in the streets people write off. Seeing that work reach the screen in a format built for how people actually watch, with a team that understands the world it comes from, is what I’ve been waiting for.”

“I’ve spent my career building audiences for stories the mainstream overlooked, and the most strategic way to do that has always been to start with an audience that already exists,” said Jeff Clanagan, President and Chief Distribution Officer of Hartbeat.

“Upscale brings both halves of that equation a catalog people have already bought into, and a team that can actually produce it at volume. That combination is rare, and it’s why they anchor this part of our slate.”

Upscale’s team comprises CEO Davis, Karrington, CFO and exec producer Tiffaney Collins, Casting Director Rhavynn Drummer, exec producer for the Latino division Liana Mendoza, Chief AI Officer Delmone Rivers and Kareen ‘Curley the 5th’ Oda, who is director and DoP. The production team also includes gaffer and cinematographer Sebastian Kolderup-Lane, camera and drone operator Kariem Meg, camera and gimbal operator Julien Hassid, editor Javon Dawkins and sound mixer Joe McGill.

Alongside the Karrrington slate, the company is making Exotic Foods primarily as proof the company structure can also originate IP. Also in development are vertical series Trapstar and The King of the South. Single Ladies and Scandalous are set to go into production, alongside the feature films R.I.C.O. Detroit and Adrenaline Junkies.

Upscale Productions has also secured rights to a story from Be Kind Rewind actor Quinton Aaron and titled it Blindsided by Love and has put it in development for Hartbeat. The Brown Family is another microdrama, which will include original music from Organized Noize, with an album released simultaneously via Universal Music Group’s Chamber Studios. The only project not beginning life as a microdrama is Rico ATL, which is being developed as a feature film from the off.

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