• By Nick Patel
• 27 Oct, 2026
• Drama Series

Worth the Chase Premieres on ReelShort Today. Here’s How the First Wattpad Adaptation Really Performed

By Nirav Patel, Founder

ReelShort’s second Wattpad adaptation, Worth the Chase, is set to premiere today, October 27, 2026. It’s the middle release in a three-title deal the two companies announced on October 15, and it follows a first adaptation that has already earned a spot on our chart. That makes today a useful test: can a story picked from a reading app’s fan base become a hit on a watching app twice in a row?

Below is what’s been announced, what the show is about, and what our own chart data says about how the first Wattpad title, Just One Kiss, has actually performed.

What Wattpad and ReelShort announced

According to Wattpad’s announcement, the partnership covers three fan-favorite Wattpad stories turned into live-action vertical series for ReelShort:

• Just One Kiss, from Emily Jean’s Wattpad hit, which premiered on ReelShort on September 27 and, by Wattpad’s count, had passed 30 million views by mid-October.
• Worth the Chase, written by FLEURNJARDIN, launching October 27.
• Taming The Playboy Boss, by Annica Dahl, due in early 2027 with no exact date yet.

Wattpad’s pitch is that its stories are written chapter by chapter, full of cliffhangers, which suits ReelShort’s short-episode format. The same announcement credits ReelShort with more than 75 million monthly active users. C21Media also covered the deal. What hasn’t been made public is just as notable: how the three stories were picked, what the authors are paid, and whether the deal will grow beyond three titles.

What Worth the Chase is about

ReelShort’s official synopsis centers on Ryan Collins, “the average nerd next door,” whose best friend Carsen, a football prodigy, shows up at her door hiding from his ex. They spend the night together. He leaves for NFL training the next day, and she finds out she’s pregnant. She decides not to tell him, assuming he’ll move on now that he’s famous.

If you follow vertical drama, you’ll recognize the building blocks right away: friends to lovers, a star athlete, and a secret pregnancy. When we checked ReelShort’s title page early this morning, it still showed “Coming Soon,” so we don’t have episode counts or view numbers yet, and we won’t guess at them.

How Just One Kiss has done on our chart

This is where our data adds something the press release can’t. Just One Kiss has been on the Vertical 52 in both of our chart snapshots so far, and the numbers below come straight from its official ReelShort page:

• October 3: 18,677,566 views and 159,786 saves. It ranked #20 with a VertiScore of 73.0.
• October 22: 34,958,044 views and 243,992 saves. It ranked #19 with a VertiScore of 71.6, in our “Rising Star” band.

That’s about 16.3 million new views in 19 days, or roughly 857,000 a day. On October 22 it also sat at #1 on ReelShort’s own TOP shelf, the most prominent row in the app’s catalog.

Across its whole run, Just One Kiss averages about 976,000 views per day by our measure. That ranks 8th among the 26 ReelShort shows on the chart, and well above the median ReelShort show’s roughly 642,000. Among the nine ReelShort shows on the chart released since September 1, only two are moving faster: Rejecting My Five Female Mates at about 4.3 million a day and Step Back! That Homeless Man Is Not to be Messed with at about 1.7 million.

So why isn’t it ranked higher? Mostly saves. Just One Kiss converts about 0.70% of its views into saves, below the 0.84% median for ReelShort shows on the chart. Its VertiScore actually slipped from 73.0 to 71.6 between snapshots even as its views nearly doubled, because the save-rate part of its score fell sharply. It still moved up one place, to #19. Our read, and it is a read rather than a proven fact, is that a lot of people sample the show without bookmarking it to come back. That’s common with titles that get heavy placement on an app’s front page. The full scoring is on our methodology page.

Wattpad titles look different from typical chart hits

One small detail stands out. The median show on the Vertical 52 has a six-word title, packed with keywords like “billionaire,” “alpha” or “mafia.” Only five of the 52 have three words or fewer, and Just One Kiss is one of them. Worth the Chase fits the same pattern. Wattpad adaptations arrive with their original book titles, which already have a following, rather than names built to catch a scroller’s eye in the app.

That’s a real difference in strategy. Most micro-drama titles have to sell the premise in the name alone. A Wattpad adaptation gets to lean on readers who already know the story. If Worth the Chase does well with a short, quiet title, it’s more evidence that an existing fan base can do the work a long keyword title usually does.

Shows on our chart with similar ingredients

Worth the Chase’s mix of sports and a hidden pregnancy isn’t new to ReelShort, and the chart shows those ingredients can travel:

• The Lost Quarterback Returns is #10 on the chart and ReelShort’s highest-ranked show, with about 250.8 million views since its July 2025 release. It’s a football family drama rather than a romance, but it shows the football setting works for this audience.
• Keeping the Cowboy’s Baby entered the chart at #47 on October 22, with about 61.3 million views since July 2026.
• Runaway Single Mom, Safe in His Arms jumped from #36 to #21, with about 155.7 million views, a sign the single-parent romance lane is still drawing viewers.

Why this deal matters for the business

Short-drama apps need a huge volume of new stories, and most still come from in-house writers or adapted scripts. A pipeline from a platform full of already-tested stories lowers the guesswork. You start with a plot readers have proven they’ll binge, then test whether viewers will too. It also fits a broader pattern for ReelShort this month. On October 18, C21Media reported a multi-year deal for Orange Middle East and Africa to offer ReelShort through Max It TV in 17 markets, after earlier carrier deals we covered in Southeast Asia. ReelShort is widening both where its stories come from and where they’re sold.

For writers, the caution is the same one we’d give anyone. Three titles is a pilot, not a program. Until Wattpad or ReelShort says how stories are chosen and how authors are paid, it’s too early to treat this as a new income stream.

What we’ll be watching

We’ll track Worth the Chase in our weekly chart updates. The questions that matter are simple. Does it reach ReelShort’s TOP shelf the way Just One Kiss did? Does it beat Just One Kiss’s pace of roughly 857,000 views a day? And does it hold onto viewers better, with a save rate closer to the ReelShort median? If the answers are yes, expect more Wattpad stories on ReelShort, and probably more book-to-screen deals across the industry. You can follow the current rankings anytime on the Vertical Charts page.