Skibbies

Oh no, Ni Ni is even older, and yeah it wouldn't work with Wu Lei. Wu Lei was last min replacement which is kind of rough. Definitely wish there's less of mismatch (face looking-wise, it's not even age, Wu Lei having baby face and child actor image definitely didn't help though.)

I saw suggestion of Jiang Yiyi if you keep Wu Lei, not sure who to match with Dilireba but there's plenty of actors that'd be far less jarring.

I know they took pay cuts but it still sound too little to me since that amounts to 50mil? i was thinking 70 or 80mil. oh well *shrug* just found budget interesting since I saw fair amount drama budgets recently and they are all way higher than I thought. I saw 100mil for Marry Me, and the lead actors aren't that much more well known than this drama's.

the other productions have that high budget because they are tencent projects, it likes to dump massive amount of money into projects, and they are all S rank, so that's why they have more money invested, they thought the ip/production have more potential.

BUT I would also like to mention that the budget is a rumour budget (from someone that guesstimate it on bilibili? or they saw the rumour and mentioned, idk). and it's just way too low even for low budget dramas, woolong nuts also added supposingly 20mil, there's no way this could be filmed with 30mil, 50mil is a real stretch too. Financial statements (for companies that are listed on stock market) have budgets for other dramas, the lowest I saw recently was 70mil for 24 ep historical, but there's other that's around 100mil. Young Blood's director (42 ep historical) mentioned theirs was about 90mil (in house mangotv production). Also A rank Youku drama Rattan (30 ep), which is modern fantasy with lot of on location shooting was rumoured to be 90mil. So I'd think it's more likely to be around that amount.

someone on weibo showed how much they reused certain scenes by changing the lighting and filming at certain angle for it to be most cost effective, which is very clever.

it just depend on who they hire. I recently watched a drama with spectacular directing and cameraworks, but I don't think it has subs (it's Advisor Alliance's director). Rattan/Goodbye My Princess' director left an impression on me, largely for all the pretty scenery and how gorgeous he end up making the female lead, he has pacing problems though (but that might not be entirely controlled by him, could be scriptwriter or investor issue).

Movie directors also tend to be more into the art, since they have time and money to do so usually (or passion). Some drama productions (directors, scriptwriter, actor) can feel like they are just doing the thing for quick buck, even those that take it seriously can fall into a routine.

pretty much? it's a good way for the less well known actors get exposure. storm eye is a jaywalk co-production though, as are many of the dramas they star in, someone told me this is first outside drama dilireba did? but i'm not familiar with all her dramas.

Technically there's 3 places they could have ended this and it's sad ending, open ending and happy ending, i think it worked out pretty well.

....because it's a youku drama LOL. I'm guessing Youku might be looking into making international platform instead of selling their dramas to other platfroms due to success of WoH but that's just a guess.

Oh, and there's no politics involved about before and afterhand either is there, damn. I think it might be cos they want everyone to have positive image of Li Shimin? I mean, it's like the biggest thing he did that could be considered "wrong". But your average Chinese doesn't seem to care honestly, he's the most beloved emperor out of all of them in my experience, surpassing Ying Zheng and Liu Che.

I'm curious how they handled Xuanwu, do you think they did a decent job? I'm most interested in that part because most Tang dramas kind of skim over the bit. (...I'm surprised they kept Li Shimin's name.....you know...lol)

No it wouldn't be, if you look at the person he's based on.

Word of Honor is fully subbed if you subscribe to Youku, there's a discussion page about it.

untranslated, I read it in chinese, http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=2364872

Historical are generally bit longer, TRP's length is from 2018 when long dramas was still popular, and it's already been cut down (So is Palace of Devotion rip). Anyways, it does say suggest (and they've been suggesting since around late 2018) so it's not a hard rule, the salary thing is a hard rule though.

Unfortunately big names sell dramas, that's why they used them, the ramification for terrible acting for awfully high salary doesn't show up till a year or two or even three years after they invest in a project. The drama market has calmed down, LeTV going backrupt, then tighter hold on historical dramas on primetime, then salary rule + episode limit put quite a damper on the market. Last year already saw effects of it, most of the dramas that made a splash (positive splash) had decent script, and several of them were under 30 ep. The shift away from tv to watching on platform + rise of people watching dramas on tiktok + pandemic put more damper on it, so this year's tv ratings are all absolutely absymal, webdrama statics so far are mostly alright, most dramas that have sort of splash so far have all been partially invested by the streaming platforms.

A small note, salary over 100m isn't really possible anymore since they've been cracked down, the height of that was around 2016/2017 just after internet giants poured into the drama market which resulted in bunch of other well off businesses investing in dramas so it jacked up everyone's prices. There's evidence (annual reports from production companies usually) that second tier or third tier (depending on how you categorise them) actors could get 80m, that's how ridiculous it was.

These days there's specific rules, the newest one say total actor salary can't be more than 40% of budget (thank god, there's still some money left over for the drama itself), and main cast's salary can't be more 70% of the total (idk what count as main cast though). On the same document, it also mentions that it strongly discourage "fillers" in dramas, suggests less than 40 ep for dramas and encourages dramas to be 30 ep or less. (thus all the recent 30ish ep dramas I guess, it's long enough for platforms to air them in a month for vip + on demand, but not too long)

Happy to share my useless trivia knowledge from strolling cnet too much :P

Both Chinese Paladin dramas I mentioned actually featured Hu Ge hahaha, on cnet, the first one is consider pinnacle of xianxia dramas, despite the fact it was heavily criticised by game fans at the time, I think all the kids that grew up with the drama but not the game got their nostalgia goggle on. It's actually decently adapted though, and fairly well told story despite the love triangle. Chinese Paladin 3 is vastly different from the game and I've been told absolutely inferior so LOL, the love polygons were real annoying but it was kind of neat to see A list actors and actress in one drama, and it fused in enough taoism that I liked it for that.

I wouldn't really trust NU for tagging to be honest, since it's probably tagged by users who are equally confused. I see low fantasy xianxia as xianxia anyways because you can totally tell a story set in xianxia world without it being about powerful people I guess? I think Xuanhuan includes Xianxia so it's not wrong per se. The thing with cultivation novels is...they are all super long, and they are basically level up and fight antagonists, I think one of NU forum's resident fav few years ago I Shall Seal the Heaven is one but WAY TOO LONG OMG.

MXTX locked the book so you can't see it anymore, but TGCF is tagged as xianxia xiuzhen (it's one tag, xiuzhen is cultivation) rather than dongfang xuanhuan (eastern xuanhuan), so I'm pretty sure MDZS is tagged as it too. It's definitely most often refer to as a xianxia novel.

TU is xianxia but low magic xianxia, and lean towards the xia (chivalry) rather than the xian (gods/immortals), it's closer to Chinese Paladin (2005) and Chinese Paladin 3 (2009?) and its entire game series than the recent ones focused on immortal realms. Chinese Paladin is very wuxia adventurey but it has immortals + cultivation (and daoism, which is sorely missed in recent xianxia dramas). It could also be a xiuxian/xiuzhen (cultivation) one because they use concept of core, but TU's focus isn't really on levelling. It can definitely be argued that it's Xuanhuan, because that's literally fantasy with eastern twist, I think it's a bigger genre that also contain xianxia but that's just me. The thing is xianxia existed before xuanhuan really became a thing so it's just...a separate genre lol. Xuanhuan technically goes under fantasy too but it's too big of a genre LOL. (Xuanhuan's term came from Huang Yi, who's a wuxia author lmao)

I found it kind of difficult to distinguish between the three. In my experience, the web novels aimed at male audience that's tagged as xianxia are usually xiuxian/cultivation novels, while the female audience ones (and thus most of the dramas you see recently) are focused on "xian" than "xia", I legit don't recall any BG novels that's focused on xia (and they all end up being romance centric so eh), you can find cultivation novels too but they are rarer. Xuanhuan from my limited experience fuse eastern and western concepts and use levelling up terms that are new and made up, like Ever Night. if it's completely western, it's Xihuan/Qihuan/Mohuan which is just fantasy (western fantasy/fantasy/magic fantasy, the three are used almost interchangibly). There's bunch of subgenres under cultivation but I don't read them enough to get them LOL.

Oh yeah I know about that, I was really surprised when I first saw it, but it make sense. They don't promote their dramas as much and their dramas are definitely mostly low budget. I like a lot of dramas that iqiyi invest/produces, but......they had.....140 dramas last year (in total, not just stuff they invest in i think), when mangotv had like 30 dramas. iqiyi i only remember maybe 20 of your shows off top of my head so i most definitely probably never saw 1/3 of your shows!

Hunan specifically sacrificed ratings for some popular variety shows and made them web variety shows and exclusive to get it started. Their inhouse dramas also get the chance to air on Hunan TV if they get lucky. Hunan is also the most trendy of all the tv stations, they started airing the popular "idol dramas" before everyone else, they started broadcasting popular high rating dramas every summer, they were the biggest stations besides CCTV 20 years ago and they were reigning king till last 5 year or so. Of course they have lot of issues too, but so do the internet giants. Jiejie last year got them lot of members that it was almost youku level for awhile, and then the show crash and burned LOL (but still most popular variety show of the year!)

I'm pretty sure Gank Your Heart only got a rating because of WYB lol, and I think I watched it because it made a splash in esport community (negative one, but it turned positive when one teams used a technique mentioned in the book for fun and people got over the fact it's a romance drama with romance tropes LOL)

because it's a mangotv drama LOL, a lot of mango dramas just finish airing without rating, the platform is too small (half the size of youku? and youku is smaller than iqiyi and wetv) and a lot of its subscribers use it to watch variety show rather than dramas. The mini reviews and reviews don't look too promising to be honest...