WK1

I think die hard fans of Reba and Allen will wait till May, if necessary. But, what if the Eng sub is delayed all the way till June or even July?? That is what I am nost worried about, not the passersby, but hardcore fans of Reba and Allen losing interests in TBW with an extended delay of 3-4 months (from its China broadcast of March 17).

I will wait, as I am not even interested in anything, other than a Dilraba drama. Will all those people from the days of TLB and YAMG continue to wait that long? If subs are delayed?

I am pretty sure WRTW will be cut down to 40. If the production team for that drama had aimed for 45, and it got cut down to 40, it may result in problematic editing.

For TBW, right from the very beginning when they planned this drama, they knew that they would exceed 40. Hence, the decision to split into 2 parts. And they did obtain airing license for both parts pretty quickly. And editing should be smooth, because they were not 'forced' to cut episodes by the censors.

I am very sure that without that episode limit, Royal Feast would have gone over 40 episodes. They had the same team that did Yanxi Palace, and that one has 70. These people do not know how to make 'short' historical dramas, and viewers have been complaining about draggy dramas for years. This is also linked to ridiculous amout of money paid to big stars.

So, the shortening of episodes killed two birds with one stone. First, it makes the storyline of historical Cdramas tighter. Second, it helps to bring down the wages of all the big stars, as less episodes means less money for them.

I fully agree that the subs were never an issue. With so many people fully bilingual in China, it would truly be a piece of cake for them to do it.

But, I do not buy their argument either, about overseas authority issues. If the real issue is commercial, they cannot push the blame to overseas authorities. Those two are very different.

Even for commercial reasons, I don't really buy that either. Why? Dilraba has legends of international fans. The Long Ballad made lots of money for Tencent in the overseas market. And, I am sure, the same goes for Allen, after his recent successes. So, I will say there should be plenty of interests from regional broadcasters to show this, if the appropriate substitles are ready.

Both TLB and You Are My Glory were licenced to Viu when those two dramas were first aired, and Vu is available in my location and Viu covers lots of countries. I am very very sure, if the subs are ready, Viu would have been more than glad to pay for the broadcasting rights, knowing that Reba's past dramas were all big hits.

Part 1 and Part 2 of TBW are totally connected. Part 2 starts, where Part 1 ends. Without the new regulation of 40 episodes max, it would make no sense for them to split into 2 parts.

Here. You can read about the new regulations:

https://technode.com/2020/02/21/regulators-unveil-rules-for-tv-shows-aiming-to-lift-industry/

Which recent one are you talking about?

There is a new limitation on number of episodes for a historical drama, which is 40. When Part 1 and 2 are combined, it has 42 episodes. So, to get around this limitation, they split into 2 parts.

Yes, Part 2 continues directly from end of Part 1; there is no break in the storyline.

Croton Media gave the following reasons for the non-release of the English sub for international viewers:

1. They claim that it was never the case that English sub is not ready. What they are impling, the subs have always been ready. I do understand why they said this. Saying that it is not ready reflects badly on its competency. So, they conveniently pushed the blame to someone or somewhere else. Where do they pushed it to?

2. They said overseas authority issues. What overseas authority issues? They did not elaborate. But this too is a lame excuse. TBW has been in their portfolio for months and months. Youku and Huace are co-producers, so Huace - which owns Croton Media- would or should know that the post production work would be completed by around March. Unless we assume that the two parties do not communicate with each other, which is ridiculous.

So, good management on the part of Huace would mean that they should have worked with overseas authorities months ahead of March 2022, so that whatever issues would have been settled ahead of time. And come March, they would be ready.

Hence, 'overseas authority issues' whatever those are, still reflect badly on the part of Huace, for poorly managing those issues. And they have been in this business for years and years! They would have worked with regional and global broadcasting authorities in the past. Whatever new regulations enacted in the past few months should be incremental and those should have been resolved swiftly, and not take months.

3. Next, they also said, and I quote: Please respect the contract limitations from drama and the actors

What kind of non-answer is this?? What contract limitations from drama?? And limitations from the actors? We have watched Dilraba's dramas for years. Allen's international fans would have watched his dramas too, for years. So, what limitations from the actors are they referring to??

And what does limitations from drama even mean?? We can only guess that this limitation refers to the mutual agreement between Youku and Huace, that we will get the subs only after Youku has completely aired it in China. International and domestic markets are two different markets. They will not canabalise each other. If they do indeed have this agreement, it is totally puzzling. Makes no sense whatsoever.

So, we are left none the wiser what are the 'real' reasons for the delay.

Youku has another big drama with Reba, Legend of Anle. Will they give us those silly excuses again?? Let's hope not, else, it will be another long wait for all of us.

We can only hope that contract limitations refer to its complete airing in China before its release in the international market, in which case we will get it close to April 25. If that is not the case, if we need to wait for months and months for the subs, I am afraid the overseas market is all but gone. International viewers would have moved on other dramas, if they need to wait 3-4 months for the subs. Their only hope would be to sell its overseas broadcasting rights to Netflix.

It will surely go up, once all the mainly English speaking fans of Dilraba and Allen come to this page. Those of us who are watching it raw and giving it 10, we are not powerful enough to push it up. We need those individuals.

Our greatest fear is that the current rating sends the wrong signal to passersby. So, honestly, those who watched it raw and yet to rate it, they should give it a 10. We do what we can, while we wait for the rest of the folks.

To all who come here wondering why no sub or when the sub will be out.
Why no sub is a difficult question to answer. When will the sub be out, slight easier to speculate.

Likely around 25 April.

Don't read some of the comments too far down. Some may contain spoilers and will spoil your fun, if you wish to watch it not knowing any of the plot.

So, come back here in about 2 weeks; we should have a clearer picture.

Those of us who are fans of Reba, we of course wish him all the best too! His career and most important, his family, that all will be well.

Please do not worry. There are hundreds out there, fans of Reba and Allen, and the novel, and even those who may not have read the novel, but simply love to watch a great Xianxia (fantasy) Chinese drama. all waiting for the English subs to be out.

Even though there are many who can watch this raw, when the subs are out, we will watch it as if it has just been broadcast. Yes, there will of course be those who will not do so. They may have watched it on those unofficial channels, but those channels have rather poor subs. These individuals may not care too much about the poor subs; they are likely not fans of either of the leads. Neither are they really concerned about getting full understanding of the drama. They are just happy to get a general idea about TBW and then move on to other dramas.

For hardcore fans of either or both of the leads, waiting for official subs is still the best, particularly for those who want to engage in meaningful discussion on this page and on the page of Part 2. I dare say, there should be hundreds or even thousands out there, all wating for the official subs.

Avoiding spoilers is good, if you want to watch it clueless. Better still, come here in about 2 weeks. Most people who are waiting for the subs will not be here till end of April, precisely because they do not want to read many of the comments here.

Indeed!

Not yet. Come back in another two weeks. Maybe we will get it by then

No they didn't. But Part 2 will finish airing in China on 25th. We suspect that Youku and Croton may have an agreement such that this drama will only be shown to international fans with Eng sub, once the airing is done in China.

Hence, any date round about April 25 is very likely.

We are ready!

While it is true that we are sorely disappointed all our momentum has been ruined by the lack of subs, hardcore Reba fans will wait for the subs, watch and come here to discuss. Even those some of those who could watch the episodes, I suspect many of them will watch with good Eng subs, and stay here to discuss.

Many of us stayed for months on the page of TLB and YAMG. Hanging around here till end of April or even till end of May is not a problem.

Those of us who could watch in raw, we already know just how good this drama is. We know how Dilraba had to lose a lot of weight just to look the part, filming even when having a fever, doing her own stunts instead of using body doubles. We will wait for the subs, no matter how long it takes. It is the right thing to do, to support an actress we appreciate so much.

They know that they already have a winner in China. It is doing so well there, I saw a tweet that says it has the highest user scale (which could mean highest total number of times Youku's app has been downloaded to watch a Cdrama) and highest conversion rate (likely most number of incremental new downloads of Youku's viewing platform brought about by a drama) since 2018.

I would not be surprised that it is Youku's most commerically successful drama since 2018.

With a winner like that, it would be foolish of them not get their act together and make even more money via the international market. We should hear something soon from Croton.

Yes, I have heard about overseas authority issues, but cannot imagine what it is about these issues that they cannot handle swiftly. After all, they are hardly novice in dealing with foreign broadcasting authorities.

And 'contract limitations', don't know what they are talking, unless they elaborate. Has it to do with their own agreement with Youku? That they will not show TBW overseas till it is completely done airing in China? In that case, it is not far away. The final episode of Part 2 will be shown to VIP viewers in China on 25 April.

There is no question that we will eventually get to watch this on Croton Media's YouTube channel. It is just a question of when.

My own expectation: No later than end April.

And, you may or may not be aware, Dilraba is from Xinjiang. She is an Uyghur, a minority ethnic group in China. To have come as far as she did, having to compete against top Han Chinese actresses, I really respect her. Supporting her was like supporting an underdog. But, these days, she is no longer an underdog, but a top dog.