Matt Shepley on Managing Vertical Talent
From traditional Hollywood to Verticals
Behind the Verticals spoke with Matt Shepley of Select Management Group about what traditional entertainment experience brings to the vertical space, and where the industry is heading.
But first, this week’s global vertical drama news…
👀 Spotted:
A new call invites writers, researchers, and creators to explore the future of microdrama storytelling. Small Screens, Big Stories: Storytelling, Seriality and Mobile Screen Culture is the working title for Evolution of Story IV, which will bring together an online symposium and a proposed edited academic collection exploring microdrama as an evolving narrative form. The project is being led by Roy Hanney at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, and aims to bring together people working across scholarship, writing, production, practice research, and the vertical drama industry.
Taye Diggs joins microdrama gold rush with verticals app Microhouse Films.
Mansa, first all-black microdrama studio, expands summer vertical slate.
What’s driving the microdrama surge? GoodShort co-founder Brenda Cheong breaks it down.
Kevin Hart’s LOL Network expands vertical comedy slate to compete with romantic microdramas.
China built the AI content factory that Silicon Valley imagined but never shipped.
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🎥 Video Interview
Matt Shepley did not stumble into vertical drama. He made a deliberate move.
After years working in traditional Hollywood representation, Matt watched the industry lose momentum through a combination of consolidation, strikes, the pandemic, and the LA fires. When he started noticing a non-union space quietly producing at volume with real consistency, he paid attention. By early 2025, he was actively encouraging his younger clients to get involved.
Now, at Select Management Group, his work centers on representing vertical actors (such as Royce Lundquist, currently appearing in the much-buzzed-about vertical musical Playback), directors (such as vertical OG Danny Farber and Kristen Brancaccio, who just directed Screen Time for Issa Rae’s HOORAE Media), and writers, while also exploring new vertical production opportunities and genres.
In the video interview below, Matt touches on the need for skilled vertical writers and fresh content ideas, union work, actor reels and education, Hollywood actors entering the space, where the industry is headed, and his take on how anyone can break into the vertical world right now.
