Text | A little drama reading, the author | Horn tip
Although the current market economy is not sluggish, it is a positive for the drama market: the "2022Q1 Domestic Drama Market Research Report" released by Yien Data shows that in the Q1 quarter of this year, the drama market has a total of 74 works (TV series 46, online dramas 28), although compared with last year, the number of works has declined slightly (17), but the overall broadcast index of the series has shown an upward trend. This means that the drama market works in the Q1 quarter of this year performed strongly, and even many "small hits" were born.
At the beginning of the year, the noonday sun short drama "Beginning" undoubtedly made a good start for this year's market, and the drama also became one of the most discussed works in the market in the Q1 quarter of this year; During the Spring Festival, iQiyi firmly sat in the C position of the market with a realistic theme "The World of People", and in the two months after the broadcast, the market heat was high, becoming the most popular work in the market so far. Among them, there are also many hot dramas such as "Crime Hunting Atlas", "A Flash of a Shining Star", which appeared as a "dark horse drama", and "The Rest of Your Life, Please Give More Advice", "Heart Residence", "Acquaintance with Junchu" and so on.
The heat of the market can be clearly perceived externally. Although the popularity of "Meet the Season" produced by noonday sunshine this year and "Our Marriage" starring Bai Baihe was less than expected, the fierce competition of these head dramas still provided more topics for the Q1 quarter, which already had a heat. According to news, in the current March alone, the number of new dramas in the drama market has reached 30, and 80% of the projects have been determined to broadcast platforms. The cold winter film and television market must exist, but it seems to have failed to work in the drama market.
Turning our attention to the current April, according to incomplete statistics, there are 12 dramas to be broadcast in this month alone. In addition to the mid-waist works that the platform has always used to fill the schedule, this month is still a pile of heads. At present, the military theme "Special Battle Glory", which is already broadcast, is the new work of "top stream" Yang Yang after "You are my glory" to gain passers-by; Di Lieba and Ren Jialun's costume fairy drama "Just Like the Return of the Dead", undertaking the first half of "Acquaintance with Junchu", which has now become the highest series of member conversion of platform Youku since 2018. The "top stream effect" is more pronounced.
The costume historical drama "Mountains and Rivers Yueming" starring Feng Shaofeng and Chen Baoguo was launched on Beijing Satellite TV last night, and is regarded as the most likely to "explode" realistic theme "Dear Child" in April, and some of the team comes from "The Hidden Corner", and "Zhang Weiguo's Summer" partnered again by Huang Lei and Haiqing also has a lot to watch. In addition, Ma Boyong's IP "The Wind Rises longxi", Yang Yang's partner Zhao Lusi's costume drama "And Try the World", as well as the suspense themes of Li Yifeng and Zhang Yi, yang Mi's "Two Eight Laws of Love" also appear in the list of films to be broadcast.
This April is still the january of the great drama generation. Who will be the next to ignite the market? Visually measuring urban family dramas and suspenseFUL IP dramas is expected to break out of the siege.
Yang Yang, Huang Lei, Qin Hao... "New Drama King" is about to be born?
In April, surrounded by "big dramas", there are also many heavy cards. Yang Yang, Feng Shaofeng, Qin Hao, Huang Lei, Ren Suxi... Looking at this list of actors alone, the April drama market is destined not to be too deserted.
Judging from the projects that have been broadcast and are to be broadcast in April, the drama market is rich in themes, quite the meaning of "a hundred flowers blooming, a hundred schools of thought contending". "Glory of Special Warfare", starring Yang Yang and Li Yitong, is a "leading" work in the Market in April. This military theme produced by Yaoke and directed by Xu Jizhou, the director of "Indelible Fan", is a backlog of works. Judging from the current broadcast trend, the drama has still suffered a lot of losses from the "backlog drama", such as the Yan Baoyue (Yang Yang) personality mentioned by netizens - from a thorn-headed soldier to a hero with a collectivist spirit, which has appeared slightly in the previous military drama "Trumpeter in Place" and "Ace Troop", which also makes "Special Combat Glory" look not "new" in terms of theme.
However, the current market heat of the drama is very impressive. According to the first day of the war report released by Youku, the popularity of the whole network on the night of the premiere of "Special Battle Glory" was 9126, 57 topics on the hot search double list, and the outflow of 10 short videos that broke 10w+ were all confirming the "drainage effect of Yang Yang". Can Yang Yang successfully play a qualified soldier? This is related to the subsequent heat trend of the show. An optimistic news is that director Xu Jizhou clearly mentioned in a recent interview that "Special Battle Glory" is a work that "does not talk about love, only war friendship", which seems to have taken a reassurance for the audience who have been worried about whether the military theme is too idolized.
If the idol-type works mostly assume "traffic" or circle drama roles, then the works with heavy drama bones and even the most popular Mesozoic actors in the current market have more winning chips. The urban family theme "Dear Child" starring Qin Hao, Ren Suxi, Nie Yuan and others, as well as the same type drama "Zhang Weiguo's Summer" starring Huang Lei, Liu Yijun, Haiqing and Mei Ting, can be described as the "top priority" in the April market.
The former is adapted from the famous sixth-generation director Wang Xiaoshuai's film work "Left and Right", and the team is composed of "part" of the "Hidden Corner" members, such as the lead actor Qin Hao and director Hu Kun, who are important creators of "The Hidden Corner", which is also the "secondary cooperation" between the two.
"Dear Child" is a family story about divorced parents who are forced to be involved in the "second group of families" in order to save their daughters with leukemia. The original film "Left and Right" is an art film with a more obvious literary and artistic temperament, which also makes it very important how the drama version is changed. Fortunately, director Hu Kun, who has rich experience in screenwriting, can adapt a family story to paint a picture, it is also extremely critical.
"Zhang Weiguo's Summer" is the "second ride" of Huang Lei and HaiQing after "Little Parting", and the TV actor configuration with a high national popularity basically reveals the ambition of this drama. In March this year, Haiqing just fell into the dilemma of "buying a house" again in "Heart Residence", and in April, he was going to mix between Zhang Weiguo and Lin Hongnian, which is how much resource explosion? Interestingly, "Zhang Weiguo's Summer" is a relatively rare middle-aged theme based on a male perspective in the market at present, and the middle-aged man is in trouble + light comedy setting, which also makes the drama full of points of view. Coupled with the fact that this drama also has four well-known actors at the same time, "Zhang Weiguo's Summer" is expected to be a hit.
Feng Shaofeng, who aired the first episode of the to be broadcast drama last night and also starred in "Heart Residence", also appeared in the April episode list, and it is also a costume history theme "Mountains and Rivers Moon Ming". It is rumored that the show is difficult to broadcast because it involves too many historical issues, and now it has officially appeared, and the show has been deleted from 80 episodes at the time of the project to 49 episodes. Some media have revealed that the drama has deleted a large number of palace struggles and power plots that have no historical records, and adopted the method of narration to remedy. As for whether it can be remedied successfully, it depends on the follow-up plot direction.
What needs to be particularly affirmed is that in the long history of today's TV dramas, costume history dramas have become extremely rare. First, this kind of theme is particularly easy to attract "historical fans" controversy, and the second is also because of the difficulty of costume dramas to star. Regardless of the final broadcast effect of "Mountains and Rivers moonlight", it is already a happy thing to fill in the column of the costume history drama that has been blank for a long time.
Yang Yang, Feng Shaofeng, Qin Hao, Huang Lei, Ren Suxi... Overall, this April is still the month of the head drama. From the perspective of the cast, the current market clearly reveals two major signals, one is a top idol actor like Yang Yang, who is relying on military and suspense themes to seek "transformation". Including the works to be broadcast that currently appear in the April film list but have not yet been finalized, such as Li Yifeng's "Nightcrawler", Wang Junkai's partner Zhang Yi's "The Gate of Rebirth", etc., are all idol actors who want to prove their transformation.
The other is a Mesozoic actor who is currently popular by relying on the "rebirth" of the family theme. Among the male actors, the appearance of Huang Lei, Qin Hao, Lei Jiayin and others can basically be regarded as head works; among the actresses, the works of actresses with their own viewing auras such as Haiqing, Sun Li, and Liu Tao are also "pre-made blockbusters".
It's a busy April.
Sweet pet abdication, suspense drama return, "de-theatrical" suspense drama can still take off?
Nowadays, when it comes to the type of drama market, sweet pet dramas are still a major topic that cannot be avoided. However, from the current and even the Q1 quarter of this year, the market for sweet pet dramas is getting "smaller". At present, in the April drama, there are two works cloaked in the cloak of "sweet pet drama", one is Zhang Hanyun's "Jade Face Peach Blossom Always Meets", and the other is Chen Xuedong and Zhang Jianning's "Originally a Teacher", the two works have different themes, but the viewing points are almost similar, nothing more than the male and female protagonists under various guises, sweet love.
However, the popularity of the two works is almost negligible in the mass market. In addition, some time ago, the sweet pet works that various platforms competed for layout, such as the new "Princess of the Film Emperor" on Mango TV, "About Love 2" broadcast by Tencent iQiyi, and "Don't Fall in Love with the Boss" starring Huang Zitao and Song Zu'er, all of them traveled in the market with a "paddling" posture.
"It's not that the sweet pet drama is not fragrant, it's that the genre theme is highly homogenized." This netizen evaluation, which often appears in the field of sweet pet dramas, is the biggest problem in the current sweet pet market. This year's drama market broadcast the highest configuration of sweet pet works "The rest of your life please more advice", in fact, implies a lot of problems in sweet pet works: such as the plot is too bland, the character setting is decent, and the number of sugar is too much, etc., have caused controversy among netizens during the broadcast, but fortunately, the drainage effect of Yang Zi and Xiao Zhan, the drama finally showed a good performance.
The temporary "abdication" of sweet pet dramas has become an indisputable fact. And what takes over it is also a genre drama that the platform is good at - suspense works. Chen Kun, Bai Yu, Nie Yuan and others starred in the costume spy film "Wind Rises Longxi", has appeared in the iQiyi to be broadcast list, this has a top IP, multi-party joint efforts to complete the costume spy film, whether it can become the next "Chang'an Twelve Hours", it is not easy to say. After all, from the perspective of the completion of Ma Boyong's IP adaptation, very few film and television parties can successfully adapt the essence of the novel - whether Ma Boyong's IP can be filmed and television has also become a hot topic in the market.
(Ma Boyong IP adaptation)
Among the suspense dramas to be broadcast, there is also "Nightcrawler" also produced by iQiyi. This suspenseful anti-drug theme by Li Yifeng and Song Yi, judging from the current introduction, seems to be a combination of "Residual Sin" + "Infernal Affairs". In 2018, the unexpected popularity of the anti-drug suspense drama "Icebreaker Action" also made this genre re-enter the audience, and it is still debatable whether the same work with the top blessing can reproduce the style of that year.
"The Gate of Rebirth", starring Zhang Yi and Wang Junkai, is a "double male protagonist" detective suspense drama created by the director Yang Dong's team after "Rebirth", which is also the second work in the market this month that focuses on the perspective of "double male protagonist". "The Gate of Rebirth" is a typical Benge reasoning theme, Zhang Yi and Wang Junkai joined hands to solve the case, which is the biggest attraction of this drama, but it also lays a new suspense for the audience: why did Zhang Yi choose the IP again?
Overall, this is a "sweet pet transposition, suspense drama to take over the baton" episode in April. A new phenomenon is that compared with the "theatricalization" that the platform loves to flaunt last year, these suspense themes to be broadcast this year, except for Youku's "Gate of Rebirth" is classified in the "suspense theater", the rest of the suspense works are basically independently scheduled, which seems to imply that the heat of the suspense theater has subsided. Of course, the platform has always existed for the polishing of the works of the suspense theater, but the "mist theater" with high-profile marketing like last year is now only quietly arranged by Mimi.
When will the next "suspense blockbuster" appear? At the beginning of the year, Tencent Video's "Beginning" can be said to have made a good start for this year's suspense theater, followed by suspense explosions, what will be there? We'll see.