This article is from the WeChat public account: One Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha), text/big entertainer.
The Taiwanese drama "Reverse Game", which began to air in early September, has become a rare dark horse of Chinese dramas this year with its good production standards and quite exquisite suspense plots, and the current plot progress has reached about one-third, with a score of 8.6 points on Douban.
Behind this drama, it is not like the popular Taiwan dramas such as "The Distance Between Us and Evil" and "Want to See You" before, but it is created by international streaming media or film and television companies in cooperation with Taiwan's local production departments. In addition to this, another "No Rain in a Godless Land", produced by Sanfeng, starring Fu Mengbai and Zeng Zhiqiao, is also expected to be broadcast within this year.
Not only a variety of original Chinese dramas, but now iQIYI is continuing to increase the content of original Korean dramas in order to further deepen the overseas market, especially for the asia-pacific region, which is particularly competitive.
After winning the exclusive distribution rights of some Korean dramas in the Asia-Pacific streaming media in the past two years, iQiyi has now followed Netflix's example and begun to invest in the production of original Korean drama content, further expanding its content lineup in overseas markets.
Compared with the Sino-US streaming media market, which has formed a relatively clear multipolar pattern, the Southeast Asian market with a large user base but relatively late development has now become a colosseum for Chinese and foreign streaming media to compete, and for iQiyi, which has considerable ambitions in overseas markets, joining this content "arms race" can be described as a key step out of the sea.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" > comprehensively upgraded the international station, and iQIYI's international ambitions were highlighted</h1>
iQIYI held an Asia-Pacific press conference called "Leading the C-Wave" in Singapore on the 20th of last month, at which Guo Youquan, vice president of iQIYI's international business, said to the outside world: "Chinese content is becoming mainstream entertainment in the world, and the demand for Chinese content by global entertainment and audio consumers is growing steadily, and more and more users are willing and beginning to enjoy watching Chinese content. ”
He also gave a set of relevant data to support the original series of "Love Theater" launched by iQiyi in May 2021, including "Moonlight Variations", "The Day It Becomes You", "Meow, Please Wish" and other episodes, in just 3 months, the cumulative number of views worldwide has exceeded 59 million so far.
Based on this, iQiyi has also begun to further build its Chinese drama lineup, including investing in the production of two original film dramas created by the Taiwanese team: "Reverse Game" starring Zhou Yumin and Li Mingshun, and "No Rain in the Godless Land" starring Zeng Zhiqiao and Fu Mengbai.
Coupled with iQiyi's first Southeast Asian original drama "The Legend of the South Sea of soul ferrying", these strategies also symbolize the extension of tentacles to develop more diversified content.
Guo Youquan also mentioned: "The demand for Chinese content among global entertainment and audio consumers is growing steadily, and more and more users around the world are willing and beginning to enjoy watching Chinese content. "iQIYI's international app and official website iQ.com have been launched in 191 countries and regions around the world, and have more than 100 million users.
Of course, some of this is obviously for overseas media, after all, the number of iQiyi's users in China has long exceeded 100 million. However, in its latest quarterly earnings report, iQiyi also announced for the first time the number of subscribers in its overseas markets: it has broken through the one million mark.
Although it is not much in absolute terms, it should be noted that even if Netflix has been working in the entire Asia-Pacific region for more than five years, as of the second quarter of this year, it has accumulated only 27.88 million subscription members, of which Japan and South Korea combined have contributed more than half of the number of users, which shows that the Southeast Asian market is not so easy to conquer.
Netflix original series "Lee Corpse Korea" series
On last year's Q3 earnings call, iQIYI CEO Gong Yu said: "The number of overseas members is very small, so the specific number is not disclosed, and it accounts for less than one percent of all members." "Three quarters later, iQiyi's overseas market soon ushered in its first million growth.
Compared with the domestic iQIYI in 2011 to 2015, the number of paid members exceeded 5 million, and the pace of its Asia-Pacific region is more obvious.
According to a previous SpotX survey, more than 400 million people in the Asia-Pacific region currently use video streaming services, and more than 69% of video viewers watch streaming videos at least once a week due to the huge impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on offline entertainment. This shows that although the growth rate of paid video streaming memberships like North America, Europe and China continues to slow down, the current Asia-Pacific region still has great potential to be tapped by streaming media.
Thanks to the direct impact of the domestic entertainment industry over the years, Chinese content has often become a stepping stone for many streaming media to enter the Southeast Asian market. For example, Netflix has also cooperated with Taiwanese film and television companies in the past two years to produce a number of Chinese content series in a row.
Netflix original series "Who is the Victim"
It can be said that the global users' love for Chinese content, in addition to iQIYI's internal data, they also conducted an online questionnaire through a total of 5200 respondents in 26 countries/regions around the world, and the results showed that up to 76% of global respondents began to watch Chinese entertainment content in the past two years, of which nearly 50% of respondents said that they not only like to watch Chinese content, but even take the initiative to recommend it to family and friends.
The core of the strategy of going overseas is still to provide high-quality content that can meet the needs of overseas local users.
In addition to the direct delivery of original Chinese-language high-heat content such as "Rebel" and "Little Shed" to overseas markets, iQIYI launched the "Love Theater" for the first time in overseas markets, closely following the successful domestic theater scheduling model and using it to improve the retention rate of specific user groups.
At the same time, iQiyi has made a breakthrough in its attempts to create local original content: in addition to the recently popular Taiwan drama "Reverse Game", it is also an important step to increase its original content. And previously, iQIYI announced that it will localize the IP adaptation of the domestic self-made drama "Soul Ferry", and cooperate with Changxin Media to create its first Southeast Asian original drama "The Legend of The South Sea of Soul Ferry", which will also be broadcast online in the international version of iQIYI in the second half of 2021.
iQIYI's First Southeast Asian Drama "The Legend of The South Sea of Soul Ferry"
Also on August 20, iQIYI also carried out a series of upgrades to its international station, and in the past year, it has actively integrated with various international stations, from the brand LOGO, product functions to content layout have been upgraded and optimized, and the new iQIYI international station has been officially launched. Among them, the brand LOGO will focus on the international version of the English LOGO, and fully enable the international version of the APP and the official website iQ.com, to provide more perfect products and services for overseas users, the upgraded content of the international version of the APP includes Dolby Atmos, 4K picture quality, personalized recommendation, multi-Chinese subtitles and other optimization functions.
In addition to brand upgrades and platform technology updates, iQIYI wants to really gain a foothold in the Asia-Pacific region and form a competitive advantage, in addition to the Chinese content it is good at, how to make content production more international is also an important proposition, and in the Asia-Pacific region, it can truly barrier-free popular content, non-Korean dramas, which is why iQIYI has also begun to extend its attention to the production of original Korean dramas.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="28" > create original Korean dramas and conquer the must-compete place in the Asia-Pacific region for streaming media</h1>
Thanks to the long-term strength of Hollywood pop culture in the world, American dramas have naturally become the siege hammer of mainstream streaming media in North America to occupy overseas markets.
Both Netflix and Disney+ have created a number of eye-catching content through the concentration of high-quality resources at the beginning, but for long-term operation and deeper penetration of the market, local content or popular culture reference in the corresponding regions is still essential, and for the entire Asia-Pacific region, in addition to Japanese animation, the most powerful live-action content is undoubtedly Korean dramas.
Although in the past few years, due to the "Korean restriction order", the voice of Korean dramas in the domestic market is not as good as in the past, but a little review can be found that even the development of domestic streaming media platforms is inseparable from the help of Korean dramas. In particular, iQIYI, which was the first to start using paid subscriptions, was the key step in "Descendants of the Sun" that was exclusively launched in South Korea in 2016, according to reports that year, this popular Korean drama alone helped iQIYI gain more than 5 million new subscribers.
Stills from Descendants of the Sun
Nowadays, Korean dramas have become an important genre for Netflix that wants to dominate the Asia-Pacific market, and unlike in the early days, it is more of a copyright procurement, through the "Lee Corpse Korea" drama, Netflix has successfully achieved direct participation in the production of original Korean dramas through a large investment, and has achieved great results. From last year's "Itaewon Class" and "Witty Doctor's Life", to this year's "DP Desertion Order" and the recently launched "Battle Royale" drama "Squid Game", Netflix's Korean drama lineup is almost comparable to its original British and American dramas in terms of content quantity and quality.
Even through "Lee Corpse Joseon", Netflix has formed its own Korean drama IP, and the earlier launch of the derivative movie "A Xin Chuan" starring Jeon Ji Hyun also indicates that the whole story will have a richer and more diversified development state. Even Disney+, which is rapidly conquering the Asia-Pacific market, recently announced that it will invest 50 billion won to create an original Korean drama "Moving" starring Cho Yin-sung, Han Hyo-joo, Cha Tae-hyun and Yoo Seung-yong, adapted from the manga.
For iQIYI, compared with Netflix or Disney+, its Chinese content may have a relative advantage, but if you want to further penetrate the market and compete head-on with these international giants, high-quality Korean dramas are still an indispensable and important content composition, under this factor, the emergence of iQIYI's original Korean dramas is undoubtedly the right strategy to cope with the trend.
Following the launch of the first original Korean drama "My Roommate is a Nine-Tailed Fox" and receiving relatively good reviews, iQiyi continued to launch more meta-genre Korean drama content in the second half of the year, including "The Road: 1 Tragedy" starring Ji Jinxi, "Bad and Crazy Evil and Crazy" starring Lee Dong-wook, one of the "Ghost CP", and Cannes film queen Quan Duyan returned to TELEVISION after a five-year absence, starring With Yoo Joon-yeol, iQiyi's original Korean drama "Human Disqualification". It has been broadcast exclusively on iQiyi International in September, and the current plot is more than halfway through, and the Douban and IMDb ratings have exceeded 8 points. "Ghost" actress Kim Ko-yin partnered with "Itaewon Class" to become popular Ahn Pu-hyun, starring in the new drama "Soft Cell Boy" has just begun broadcasting.
Stills from "The Feminine Cell Boy"
The next list of iQiyi's original Korean drama films is also quite eye-catching, especially in the suspense genre of Korean dramas, as well as the female revenge work "High Class" starring the actress Cao Rujing, who became popular in the movie "Parasite", and the suspense drama "Hometown" directed by Park Hyun-suk, director of "Secret Forest 2", and starring actress Han Yili.
At the same time, in addition to the series, this year iQiyi also plans to launch two Korean movies, "After if it rains" starring Jiang Ha-na and Qian Junxi, describing a man and woman who have been exchanging letters, and finally agreed to meet on December 31, when it rains. "Sopranos Talk" is a classic Korean horror film series, after many years of rebooting, "Sopranos Talk About Reboot: Alma Mater" depicts the heroine Eun Hee (Kim Seo Hyung) after losing her high school memories, returning to her alma mater as the dean of academic affairs, and discovering various strange events on campus with students, and even feeling the fear of death.
Of course, in today's era of big bang for streaming content, it is undoubtedly a bit too arrogant to rely solely on a few episodes or movies a year to win the favor of audiences. Moreover, as an international platform, how to truly gain the trust of different local content producers and identify the interest of different regions and more segmented audiences is still testing the operational ability and investment determination of the platform.
This can obviously be more enlightening from Netflix's experience, and its Japanese and Korean markets have also experienced a tepid stage of early original content, after all, as an external monk, it is not always too easy to obtain the true scriptures.
Therefore, for iQIYI, this year's original Taiwan drama or Korean drama can finally achieve what word of mouth is actually not the key (of course, the final can have a good evaluation is not a bad thing), the most important thing is still brand building and sustainable content production ability training, after all, different from the platform advantage position that has been established in China, going to the sea to enter a broader market, on the one hand, it needs to face a more complex competitive situation, on the other hand, for film and television production with a long industrial chain, Building a complete production and publicity system from scratch also requires more time and investment.
Korean drama "Human Disqualification", Douban and IMDb scores exceeded 8 points
Even Netflix, which previously relied heavily on Local Korean TV stations and production companies, announced in January that it would add two more studios in South Korea, totaling more than 16,000 square meters of studio space to improve its local film and television production efficiency. Netflix then announced that it had rented two studios from Toho in Japan to deliver on its promise to increase the production of original Japanese content.
It can be said that the production of original content in different regions has progressed to a certain stage, and will eventually develop into a truly localized industrial chain layout, after all, today's film and television industry is actually the same as chip foundry or automobile manufacturing, relying on both global capital flows and local large-scale production.
When iQIYI no longer relies solely on domestic massive output, but truly enters the local original, it is a real step to expand the overseas incremental market, but this is only the first step, in the long run, if you want to continue to get the favor of more users in the Asia-Pacific market, you still need continuous investment and firm determination.