aghh thank you so much for all your work and your info!!!! it makes me weirdly happy how much effort they have…
I agree! I actually like that they're keeping it low-key, hopefully this means they managed to pass censorship without too much changes. Plus, not knowing much means you won't have too high expectations, which also makes it easier for the drama to impress too.
Rumors I've seen on Weibo (note: please take all rumors with huge pinches of salt, most airing rumors this year for BL dramas have been WRONG) regarding this drama:
- It might air in October - MGTV is reportedly planning to sell broadcasting rights to the other broadcasting companies, and everyone is desperately hoping for it to happen since it means MGTV won't get to destroy the drama with their horrible editing - it has potential to be a dark horse in BL101
I'm thinking it's a combination of the following reasons for its lack of buzz: - it's an MGTV drama, and viewers haven't had hope for their dramas due to the terrible editing the dramas go through. (Though Shi Lei promised us that this drama has the same editing team as SCI, so we're all just hoping that MGTV doesn't go on to edit the drama again themselves before airing it.) - from what I've heard, it's actually a pretty low-budget drama, especially compared to others like Immortality and Winner is King - the author used to be quite popular in the 2000s, but her writing style isn't quite as liked nowadays due to shifts in taste and preferences. I'm not familiar with her works, but I do know she's written A LOT of BL. I'm not sure how popular Bat is among her fans, but I'm getting the feeling it's not one of her super popular works, kind of like the original novel for Word of Honor to Priest fans. - the original author is also the scriptwriter for this drama, but her BG script Court Lady didn't do well and viewers didn't really like it, so some people have been like "given how Court Lady went I can't look forward to this"...
And to answer your question, nobody knows when it's going to air either...
I've been wandering around the drama's supertopics on Weibo and lurking in Bilibili and Douban, and have seen…
I can't believe I forgot the most important point, we still don't know who the scriptwriter(s) are for this drama!!! Is it Zhou Yuan Zhou's PTSD from Guardian? (Yes, he was also the director for Guardian, and the scriptwriters were wholly hated upon by the fandom after the drama finished.)
I've been wandering around the drama's supertopics on Weibo and lurking in Bilibili and Douban, and have seen how much the production team was dedicated to keeping the filming as tightly sealed as possible. All I can say is, now I know why everyone jokes about the secrecy level of this production team!
- In general, the fans taking photos and videos on the filming site can't share leaks of the drama itself, only off-drama portions. Any leaks regarding actual drama scenes are usually deleted by the fans, though there are still some things floating out there (like one scene where Guyun was wearing wings and Chang Geng was holding on to him). - In the early days of filming, the production team registered the drama under another name, 狼噬(Wolf Bite) instead of the original name 杀破狼, and listed the leads as Song Jiyang and one of the other actors to prevent the fans from finding their filming location in Xiangshan Movie & TV Town lmao - On one of the leads' birthday, they happened to walk out of the restaurant together and to prevent the fans from having footage of both of them together, they were covered in 10+ umbrellas by the staff. (What even...) - The leads are also kept apart from each other when entering or leaving their hotel, and aren't allowed to even take the same lift together to prevent fans from seeing them together. (I don't even understand the logic for this...) - Apart from the customary post by the leads during the casting announcement on Weibo, they generally haven't been allowed to post stuff regarding the drama. Their posts on the final day of filming, Chen Zheyuan posting an image of 'Chang Geng Village' (apparently it exists!), Tan Jianci making a reference to Guyun in his post have all been deleted. The only thing that seems to have escaped is Chen Zheyuan's photo of Luosifen on the 16th day of the first month of the lunar calendar, at 16:52. (Explanation: 16th day of the first month of the lunar calendar is Guyun's birthday, 16:52 = Sixteen I love (this one involves some Chinese wordplay here), Tan Jianci loves luosifen but Chen Zheyuan hates it, so why did he post a photo of it? If you get it, you get it. Heh, can't wait to see their Weibo posts when the drama finally airs.) - It's rumored that the director declined a Bazaar photoshoot for the leads, and if you've been around enough, you know that the more popular BL drama leads get Bazaar photoshoots (also jokingly referred to as wedding photoshoots since they usually wear suits for some of the photos), so fans have been mad about it. - Both the director and the assistant director deleted their Weibo accounts. (Probably to avoid the fans scolding them? LOL)
Hence now the running jokes amongst the fans are "Zhou Yuan Zhou (the director of this drama) when are you going to give us the drama?!" and "did Zhou Yuan Zhou come after you with a knife?" (whenever something related to the drama gets deleted later, like referencing it in a Weibo post). Yep, the director is now the fandom's scapegoat for everything xD
About to finish Book 1 (two chapters left), Gu Yun and Chang Geng just reunited and I've got to say, I can't imagine…
I've heard rumours that this drama has a budget of 240 million RMB (around 37 million USD), but I haven't managed to find proof yet. Saw an image on Weibo, and if I'm understanding the image correctly, filming used 160 million RMB. (https://i.imgur.com/7Op1mBg.jpg) so that would mean they still have a decent budget left for post-production (special effects, voice dubbing etc) and promotion.
Bonus trivia I found on the internet: it's also rumoured that iQiyi also invested in this drama so that they can air SPL on their platform too, instead of it being a Tencent exclusive drama. Apparently it's because Chen Zheyuan is iQiyi's 'crown prince', basically their most promoted actor (which is laughably sad if you look at his filmography, surely the saddest crown prince in existence) and they don't want Tencent to rake all the benefits of airing SPL alone.
Came across a video on bilibili, someone cut the leads as a ship into one video, and the video has heavy war themes,…
It's not actually SPL content but I thought it was pretty interesting that someone thought about them back in 2018. Also the video was published on Priest's birthday, what a coincidence!
Came across a video on bilibili, someone cut the leads as a ship into one video, and the video has heavy war themes, but it was published in 2018, and all the comments are like "wow you can predict the future" and "I suspect SPL director watched this video before casting them" 😂http://b23.tv/cM9MPd
I hate to think of this but I guess we should come back for hopeful news after the airing of Ancient Love Poetry.…
SPL does have a good budget, but actually it's not one of Tencent's "S+" dramas like Ancient Love Poetry was. Immortality is Tencent's only S+ BL drama.
- It might air in October
- MGTV is reportedly planning to sell broadcasting rights to the other broadcasting companies, and everyone is desperately hoping for it to happen since it means MGTV won't get to destroy the drama with their horrible editing
- it has potential to be a dark horse in BL101
(Also, the BTS pictures and videos are mostly filmed by fans at the filming scene! Not actual BTS from the production team!)
- it's an MGTV drama, and viewers haven't had hope for their dramas due to the terrible editing the dramas go through. (Though Shi Lei promised us that this drama has the same editing team as SCI, so we're all just hoping that MGTV doesn't go on to edit the drama again themselves before airing it.)
- from what I've heard, it's actually a pretty low-budget drama, especially compared to others like Immortality and Winner is King
- the author used to be quite popular in the 2000s, but her writing style isn't quite as liked nowadays due to shifts in taste and preferences. I'm not familiar with her works, but I do know she's written A LOT of BL. I'm not sure how popular Bat is among her fans, but I'm getting the feeling it's not one of her super popular works, kind of like the original novel for Word of Honor to Priest fans.
- the original author is also the scriptwriter for this drama, but her BG script Court Lady didn't do well and viewers didn't really like it, so some people have been like "given how Court Lady went I can't look forward to this"...
And to answer your question, nobody knows when it's going to air either...
- In general, the fans taking photos and videos on the filming site can't share leaks of the drama itself, only off-drama portions. Any leaks regarding actual drama scenes are usually deleted by the fans, though there are still some things floating out there (like one scene where Guyun was wearing wings and Chang Geng was holding on to him).
- In the early days of filming, the production team registered the drama under another name, 狼噬(Wolf Bite) instead of the original name 杀破狼, and listed the leads as Song Jiyang and one of the other actors to prevent the fans from finding their filming location in Xiangshan Movie & TV Town lmao
- On one of the leads' birthday, they happened to walk out of the restaurant together and to prevent the fans from having footage of both of them together, they were covered in 10+ umbrellas by the staff. (What even...)
- The leads are also kept apart from each other when entering or leaving their hotel, and aren't allowed to even take the same lift together to prevent fans from seeing them together. (I don't even understand the logic for this...)
- Apart from the customary post by the leads during the casting announcement on Weibo, they generally haven't been allowed to post stuff regarding the drama. Their posts on the final day of filming, Chen Zheyuan posting an image of 'Chang Geng Village' (apparently it exists!), Tan Jianci making a reference to Guyun in his post have all been deleted. The only thing that seems to have escaped is Chen Zheyuan's photo of Luosifen on the 16th day of the first month of the lunar calendar, at 16:52. (Explanation: 16th day of the first month of the lunar calendar is Guyun's birthday, 16:52 = Sixteen I love (this one involves some Chinese wordplay here), Tan Jianci loves luosifen but Chen Zheyuan hates it, so why did he post a photo of it? If you get it, you get it. Heh, can't wait to see their Weibo posts when the drama finally airs.)
- It's rumored that the director declined a Bazaar photoshoot for the leads, and if you've been around enough, you know that the more popular BL drama leads get Bazaar photoshoots (also jokingly referred to as wedding photoshoots since they usually wear suits for some of the photos), so fans have been mad about it.
- Both the director and the assistant director deleted their Weibo accounts. (Probably to avoid the fans scolding them? LOL)
Hence now the running jokes amongst the fans are "Zhou Yuan Zhou (the director of this drama) when are you going to give us the drama?!" and "did Zhou Yuan Zhou come after you with a knife?" (whenever something related to the drama gets deleted later, like referencing it in a Weibo post). Yep, the director is now the fandom's scapegoat for everything xD
Bonus trivia I found on the internet: it's also rumoured that iQiyi also invested in this drama so that they can air SPL on their platform too, instead of it being a Tencent exclusive drama. Apparently it's because Chen Zheyuan is iQiyi's 'crown prince', basically their most promoted actor (which is laughably sad if you look at his filmography, surely the saddest crown prince in existence) and they don't want Tencent to rake all the benefits of airing SPL alone.