theotherayn

as far as everyone knows, yes.

UPDATE 2: they ended up announcing the drama but with no cast or crew, just produced by Huanyu. I submitted the concept poster to the drama page as well.

https://kisskh.at/781100-xing-zhi-wan

Story summary:
With the restart of time and space, they met at different time points, but encountered more cruel variables every time they were about to successfully change the fate of their country. From hostility to temptation, from suspicion to repeated affection... When he died in front of her for the eighth time, they finally understood that the key to this reincarnation of blood and conspiracy in time and space was hidden in his darkest memory.

UPDATE: they are not announcing it anymore (🍉seems to be Yu Zheng is fighting with 🐧or whoever the FL is) + the director is now rumored to be Ma Shi Ge (assistant director of The Double and Perfect Match)

sigh, I like Ma Shi Ge (he directed The Double's infamous rain scene with beautiful intimacy) but I was hoping they'd get a director from outside of Yu Zheng's influence to help rein him in.

EDIT: confirmed to be announcing tomorrow at 12:15pm China time. hope they announce the director/team as well.

🍉Xing Zhi Wan will be announced on the 23rd during Tencent's Investment Conference. FL is Wang Yinglu. (though some are saying it's not decided yet so Xingyue will be announced alone.)

Yu Zheng's resources are mostly costume dramas so there's nothing we can do. Maybe if Wanted Detective does well, he'll get some offers for suspense shows or hopefully rumors about the modern idol Confession are true and he accepts so at least he can try to get out of his comfort zone. Yes, I like He Lan Dou too but she doesn't seem to have strong backers because she should have gotten a better career after her performance in A Journey to Love.

Anyway, new rumors dropped this morning and apparently since Tencent had a fortune teller tell them that a second collaboration between actors is going to give them a hit, they're trying to get Zhou Ye (she's also rumored for another drama so we'll see. YZ denied ZMY again through his casting company but the melon owners are insisting that he's lying. Maybe Tencent wants her but he doesn't so they're fighting.) I'm actually more interested in who they'll get as a director because this type of story needs a good one.

Shadow Detective
Type of work: Web drama
Theme: Republic of China, detective stories, romance
Current progress: first round of issuance
Episodes: 24
Director: Liu Yujing
Main actors: Wang Xingyue, Wu Jiayi
Story summary:
In the early 1930s, a female college student died mysteriously in a dormitory in Shanghai. Guan Cen, the inspector of the Central Patrol, met Lu Yizhen, a female college student who loved detective novels. The two worked together to find out the real murderer, but this involved a kidnapping case of a girl seventeen years ago. Guan Cen tried to use Lu Yizhen to find out the truth about the disappearance of his sister Guan Jingning, but was discovered by Lu Yizhen, and the two broke up. Two years later, Lu Yizhen participated in the first batch of female police recruitment in Shanghai. She wanted to solve the mystery of the seventeen-year-old case herself, and Guan Cen became her direct superior. In the patrol room where cases were one after another, Guan Cen silently protected Lu Yizhen's safety. The two gradually understood each other and joined forces to reopen the old case.

Finally some movement on Shadow Detective: production company Wanda Pictures held a conference today and they put it on a coming soon lineup together with Love Has Fireworks, Justice's Path with the Youth, and King of Comedy. No platform on the poster but there was a new synopsis (plus a different director and episode count) shared last month. Putting it in under a spoiler comment:

he seems to be busy filming Love in Red Dust this month and said in his anniversary livestream that he's too busy to go to Hi6/Hello Saturday. there are rumors that he's announcing a new business title soon and The Wanted Detective seems to be a drama that iQiyi will drop without much promo (basically to fill the schedule if another drama can't be aired for some reason) so just stay tuned.

WXY also said in the livestream that Xing Zhi Wan is still set for September (but no proper rumors on the FL yet, for the ones that have been mentioned before: Ju Jingyi has been confirmed for 2 other dramas and Yang Chaoyue seems to be doing a movie next so it's not them. Yu Zheng also confirmed that Tencent has the final say on the FL.)

6/18 EDIT: some melons are now saying again that the XZW FL is Zhang Miaoyi but Yu Zheng refuted this rumor a month ago and she's also rumored for another drama. we'll probably know by Tencent's conference on June 23 since she's attending.

+ Wang Xingyue was shooting something yesterday afternoon to late night, it could be a business thing or apparently his usual makeup artist had a livestream that day that they were preparing for a magazine.

June Schedule:

June 5 - business event (LUX)
June 10 - business live broadcast

the rest of the month will be spent filming but also...
🍉June 6 - rumored to be invited to the Vogue event but no confirmation yet (UPDATE: looks like he isn't going)
🍉The Wanted Detective might finally drop in June, no specific date from the melon owners but the guess is in the later half of the month (UPDATE: not in iQiyi's June drama list but melons are still saying that if Dream Within a Dream doesn't get its broadcast license, they'll drop this instead.)

today (May 31) is also the 5th anniversary of his debut! what a nice gift.

no problem! since I'm stalking there for casting news, might as well share what I know haha

cctv seems to love him (they invite him to events and post about him often) and he's obviously trying to build his national popularity now (as opposed to weibo popularity) so we'll see in the next few dramas if he can maintain a steady audience.

yeah I read the posts back as far as I could and they started nitpicking everything he did early on and kicked out everyone who tried to compliment his portrayal. it's mostly just on douban though, xhs/rednote is okay. i just find it easier to search for casting/project updates on douban and that's why I'm still there.

yeah I don't envy any Chinese artist, cnetz are terrible. and Douban is the worst actually, don't ever go to The Double forum there because it's basically a hate group against WXY. I was really surprised when I first saw it and it was all this screaming over nothing.

he's said in interviews that his philosophy in life is to just keep moving forward so it looks like he's adjusted. it's just sad that his boss Yu Zheng is the usual catalyst for the hate (like the whole Tang Palace fight) and he has 5 more years at least under that contract so he'll have to steel himself for more of it. he's always happy to be filming though so at least all the fan circle hate didn't have an effect on producers wanting to cast him.

(1) his first big role, Liu Zixing in One and Only was a villain and he still gets scolded in Douyin (China's Tiktok) over it.

(2) he was mocked for his thinness in First Love so much that he's said he doesn't feel comfortable doing modern dramas.

(3) once he started going viral in June last year, multiple groups on Douban (China's Reddit) started spreading rumors to "blacken" him and it was really bad for a few months. but anyway, if you stay away from Chinese social media sites you won't see the negativity so much. cnetz did try to post the rumors here on MDL last year but international fans really didn't care about it because they were all just silly things that no one should waste energy over and not any actual crimes.

chinese netizens (internet citizens)

The Wanted Detective on iQiyi. no confirmed date yet but they say sometime in the summer (July-September)

basically traumatized bad boy with a heart of gold x good girl with a bad case of "i can fix him"-itis trope. she has an unrequited crush on him in high school, they date/breakup in college, then meet up again as adults when she's a doctor and he's a disgraced pilot. if you've watched Veronica Mars, the character reminds me of Logan Echolls so I kinda want him to do it, especially if the scriptwriter is good. but the book ML is infamously slutty (before he falls in love with the FL) so if they don't change that, he'll get a lot of heat from cnetz again haha.

it hasn't started shooting yet. scheduled to begin in september.