A copy of the National Enquirer is seen on a shelf on February 06, 2023 in New York City.

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The National Enquirer and Hollywood-backed verticals company GammaTime are betting that the infamous tabloid’s salacious appeal extends far beyond screaming headlines at grocery checkout counters.

The microdrama streaming app and MediaCo, the current owner of the long-running tabloid, have inked a production deal to adapt stories from the Enquirer archives as vertical series, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The partnership kicked off on Wednesday with the release of National Enquirer Presents: The Drew Peterson Story, a true-crime series about the infamous Illinois police sergeant-turned-convicted murderer, on the GammaTime app.

The deal demonstrates how microdrama companies are increasingly experimenting with true crime and unscripted formats as they attempt to grow their American audience and stay true to the genre’s typically id-fueled soapy and sensational storytelling. And the 100-year-old Enquirer certainly has vault of lurid storytelling to mine.

“It’s incredibly exciting to take those stories that every reader has read in one place or another, whether it was the National Enquirer or not, and bring it to life in a modern format rather than traditional cable and long cuts,” MediaCo president James Robertson said in an interview about the deal. “Being able to create stories in this format is incredibly exciting.”

He added, “A lot of the reporting has never been seen online. So if you didn’t buy the National Enquirer in 1992, you don’t know those stories.”

Upcoming series will adapt Enquirer’s past writings on the Richard Ramirez, Karen Read and Wanda Holloway cases. But GammaTime CEO Bill Block, the former CEO of Miramax, called these adaptations just “the tip of the iceberg” of what he plans to do with the Enquirer.

The tabloid’s notorious celebrity coverage will likely make an appearance. Robertson noted that the Enquirer’s archives included stories on “the Kennedys, the Presleys, the Jacksons, the forbidden love stories, the dynasty element to it… these are names and stories that supersede trends and generations.”

Still, claims Block, don’t expect GammaTime to be adapting outlandish stories such as previous proclamations from the Enquirer that Hillary Clinton and Cher were on their death beds. The GammaTime CEO said his app would be adapting only “factual, verifiable, true things [and] historical things, too.”

GammaTime raised $14 million from such investors as Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian before it launched in October 2025. Since then, the company has been busy attempting to build out the platform’s library and earlier this year entered a licensing agreement with the company behind Forensic Files to adapt the old-school TV series into the vertical format.

But GammaTime faces a crowded space of competitors that are all vying to become the go-to app for microdrama consumers in the U.S. and prove that microdramas can be a viable business stateside. Block declined to provide the number of paying users that the app boasts at present, but this latest deal will see the National Enquirer’s social media channels and print tabloid amplifying its verticals on GammaTime.

MediaCo also publishes the Globe, National Examiner, Star, Closer, InTouch and First for Women. The media company accelerate360 offloaded the Enquirer amid its merger with McClatchy in 2024 after years of scandal for the publication, which was accused of “catch-and-kill” schemes to quash negative stories about then-candidate Donald Trump during his first run for president.

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