Harlequin and Dashverse to Launch Animated Microdrama Franchises

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Harlequin and Dashverse today announced a strategic multi-year agreement to co-produce a slate of 40 animated microdramas inspired by Harlequin Romance titles. The collaboration will launch in April with its first adaptation, A Fairy-Tail Ending by Catherine Mann.

The microdramas will be developed by a team of illustrators assisted by Dashverse's proprietary production system, Frameo, a purpose-built platform for creating high-quality, serialized video at scale. This innovative approach captures the passion, drama, and emotional depth that define Harlequin novels, delivering them in concise, mobile-friendly episodes tailored to on-the-go audiences. The series will be distributed in English across leading global microdrama platforms, including Dashverse’s DashReels, reaching a rapidly growing audience of short-form drama viewers worldwide.

“Harlequin romance stories have a long-standing legacy of resonating with readers through their universal themes of love and connection,” said Brent Lewis, EVP and Publisher, Harlequin. “This partnership with Dashverse represents an exciting opportunity to reimagine these cherished stories for a new audience, leveraging cutting-edge technology to bring them to life in an innovative and engaging medium.”

“Some of the most powerful stories in the world already exist, they just need to be experienced in new ways,” said Sanidhya Narain, CEO and Co-Founder of Dashverse. “With Harlequin, we’re unlocking a vast library of beloved stories and reimagining them for a format that is visual, immediate, and built for today’s generation. This is a step toward building global entertainment franchises from existing IP, powered by AI.”

The collaboration comes at a time when short-form serialized video is rapidly emerging as a new global entertainment format, with growing demand for high-frequency, mobile-first storytelling. Additional adaptations are slated for release in May, including Forbidden Fiji Nights with Her Rival by JC Harroway, Newlywed Enemies by Jackie Ashenden, The King's Pregnancy Proposition by LaQuette, and Mistletoe Baby Mix-Up by JC Harroway.

About Dashverse

Dashverse is an AI-native entertainment company building the infrastructure for the next generation of storytelling. Through its ecosystem, DashReels, a global microdrama platform, and Frameo, an AI-powered creation platform, Dashverse enables creators and studios to produce and distribute high-quality serialized video at unprecedented speed and scale, fueling a new era of mobile-first entertainment and building the launchpad for the world’s next global entertainment franchises. Follow Dashverse on LinkedIn: @Dashverse

About Harlequin

Headquartered in Toronto, Harlequin is a leading publisher of fiction and narrative nonfiction that began publishing romance novels in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1949 and has published 6.7 billion books since its start. Harlequin is unique in the publishing world as a destination brand for romance novels, with 65% of readers thinking of Harlequin first when they think of romance novels. The company publishes more than 100 titles a month, in both print and digital formats, that are sold around the world. Encompassing highly recognizable imprints that span a broad range of genres, the publisher is home to many award-winning New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling authors. Harlequin is a division of HarperCollins Publishers, the second-largest consumer book publisher globally, with operations in 15 countries and 16 languages. Follow Harlequin on Facebook: @HarlequinBooks, X: @HarlequinBooks, Instagram: @HarlequinBooks, and TikTok: @HarlequinBooks.