The author | Horn tip
After 4 years of violation, the historical theme of ancient costumes ,"Mountains and Rivers Moonlight", landed on Beijing Satellite TV and Youku platforms last Wednesday night. Compared with the costume dramas that cannot "open the box" (backlog dramas) and are difficult to "star", "Mountains and Rivers Moonlight" is undoubtedly lucky. And the report card that started broadcasting less than a week ago and handed over to the market is also full of highlights:
Cool Cloud live data shows that on the night of the premiere of the drama, it won the first place in the ratings of the same period in CSM34 City, #Shan He Yueming#, #Feng Shaofeng Chengyi played a role together# and other related topics, and then appeared on Weibo hot search. On the evening of the second day of broadcasting, the drama appeared in the top 10 of the professional data list such as Detaven and Lighthouse, and at present, the drama has ranked top3 in the major data lists. The steady progress of the ratings has also made it firmly sit on the current TV series ratings champion. On Weibo, the official topic of #Shan He Yueming was read more than 4200w and the discussion was 22w.
"Mountains and Rivers MoonLight" is a large-scale costume historical drama produced by Huanrui Century, a well-known domestic film and television company. The drama was prepared in 2018 and was originally titled "Jiangshan Ji". After the story, everyone has heard a little. It and another costume history giant "Tianxia Chang'an" produced by Huanrui Century were "locked up" together due to the problem of themes. The latter jumped the file many times in 2018, and finally became a backlog drama together with "Mountains and Rivers Moon Ming".
In the annual reports disclosed by Huanrui Century many times, the investment costs of "Shan He Yueming" and "The World Chang'an" have been revealed, the former investment cost is 320 million, the latter is 360 million. The forced backlog of these two costume history blockbusters, as well as another costume drama produced by Huanrui, "The Apocalypse of the Fengshen Gods", also plunged the film and television company into a financial crisis.
In the subsequent financial report, Huanrui Century has also mentioned the impact of these backlog works on its own performance many times. Among them, the impairment of the two works of "The World Under Chang'an" and "The Apocalypse of the Fengshen Gods" exceeded 600 million, and they were directly questioned by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange at the end of 2021.
Nowadays, "Mountains and Rivers Moonlight" has been successfully launched, which is obviously a happy event for Huanrui Century and fans who love historical dramas. Can "Mountains and Rivers moonlight" become the first work to help Huanrui "clear the clouds"? What impact did its smooth broadcast have on the subsequent historical drama track? The answer is coming.
"Ming Dynasty Funny Family": "Mountains and Rivers Moon Ming" is enduring?
Audiences who know a little about the TV drama market know that there are not many works that dare to advertise themselves as "historical dramas" this year. Even last year, director Li Shaohong's "Great Song Palace Words" and "Daming Fenghua", which is also a story of the Ming Dynasty, deliberately changed the word "history" to "legend" in the theme column during the broadcast.
This shows the courage of "Mountains and Rivers and Moonlight". It tells the story of Zhu Di, the fourth son of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, who has been on the battlefield since he was young, has gone through battles, and finally grown into a qualified military commander and a mature politician, and achieved a great cause. The historical ambition of "Mountains and Rivers and Moon Ming" can be clearly perceived by the audience: the opening crew introduced the early political pattern of the Ming Dynasty to the audience through the big scene of the Yuanming War.
(The "big scene" scene in the play is well received)
When Zhu Yuanzhang was in the dynasty, the Yuan people's forces were looking at the tiger, and the founding hero Xu Da was jealous of his military achievements, and at this time, the young Zhu Di, who had been crowned as the King of Yan, was bent on making military merits on the battlefield. However, the direction of the story also began to appear partially flawed. For example, the "Hongwu Northern Expedition" presented at the beginning of the series was pointed out by history fans as a landmark historical error.
According to historical records, the second Hongwu Northern Expedition should be Xu Da directly appointed as the commander-in-chief, Li Wenzhong as the left deputy general, Feng Sheng as the right deputy general, Xu Da as the Middle Road Army, Li Wenzhong as the East Road, and Feng Sheng as the West Road. In the Hongwu Northern Expedition presented in the play, Xu Da did not go out at the beginning, and Li Wenzhong became the commander of the Northern Expedition. Until his defeat, Zhu Yuanzhang listened to the advice of the crown prince Zhu Biao and recommended Xu Da as the commander", a netizen on Douban shared.
Another thing that makes the audience less satisfied is the emotional drama of the teenager Zhu Di currently presented by the play. According to historical records, Zhu Di and Empress Xu met in their youth, and before Empress Xu was officially married to Zhu Di, the two had been with each other for three years. It can be described as a real green plum bamboo horse, and the two have a deep affection. However, in the play, the current screenwriter is suspected of arranging another feeling for the teenager Zhu Di, that is, Zhu Di met the Mongolian princess in the military camp, and the princess seemed to have a secret heart for him.
In addition, the show was censored (from 80 to 45 episodes), and the editing jump became a major problem. Many netizens admitted that some plots are really difficult to connect, "One second is still a battlefield, and the next second is the back garden of the palace." ”
one bad apple won’t spoil the whole bunch. Although "Mountains and Rivers and Moons" currently has some accusations because of problems such as backlogs and historical facts. But on the whole, this is still a rather ambitious historical drama: for example, the growth line of the young Zhu Di presented in the play was placed under the turmoil of the political pattern in the early years of the Ming Dynasty. Including the audience's criticism of his relationship with the Mongolian princess, in fact, the share is very limited, and it also initially reveals the ambition of this drama to do the right drama.
Secondly, the land annexation issue involved in the history of the Ming Dynasty is basically a passing point in the past historical dramas, but "Mountains and Rivers And Moon Ming" sets it as the overall perspective, which is also the biggest point of view that the drama is fundamentally different from other historical dramas.
Finally, the show has a national treasure cast. The emergence of old drama bones such as Chen Baoguo, Zhang Fengyi, Wang Ji, Wang Jinsong and so on has basically helped the drama lock in TV series users, and the actor of the young Zhu Di, Cheng Yi, is also known as the most promising rising artist of "Huanrui Brother", and the adult Zhu Di is played by Feng Shaofeng, who still has a certain basic disk in the hearts of the TV audience.
Overall, although "Mountains and Rivers and Moonlight" has a groove, it is flawed. In particular, its determination to do historical drama has raised the market position of this drama. Can it move forward steadily in the later stages? At present, the answer from the perspective of the ratings effect is considerable.
After the "quasi-explosive rate" is reduced, how much imagination does Huanrui still have?
Speaking of today's Huanrui Century, the market will inevitably have a pang of regret. In 2014, the costume fairy drama "Ancient Sword Qitan" made a good start for it, and also took advantage of the trend to let his own artist Yang Mi go to a higher level, and the newcomer Li Yifeng became a "huanrui brother", and at that time, Yang Yang, who competed with Li Yifeng for this name, was also a little later than him.
From the perspective of the work, Huanrui has also become famous in the industry from this time. After that, the company increased the production of costume dramas, not only in 2016 to create another Xian Xia drama hit "Qingyunzhi", but also let Yang Zi, who was in a confused period of acting at the time, find a new direction in life; in 2017, Huanrui once again created a costume boutique "Datang Glory", which not only received super high ratings at that time, but also made Ren Jialun and Qin Junjie, who were in the newcomer stage at the time, come to the fore.
If it continues to operate according to this rhythm, Huanrui is probably still a quasi-first-line production company that "holds dramas and people" in the market that year. Unfortunately, since the beginning of 2017, with the tightening of the costume drama policy, Huanrui, which is committed to deepening its cultivation in the field of costume drama, and Tang Dynasty Film and Television, which has similar attributes, have been hit hard.
At that time, Huanrui was heavily preparing the costume historical drama "The World Under Chang'an" and the recently broadcast "Mountains and Rivers Moon Ming". These two works are regarded by the industry as new projects that Huanrui Century has turned the limelight in order to "survive". After all, both works spent a lot of money at that time and took the historical drama route, which seems to be contrary to the elements of the "ancient restriction" policy such as forbidden crossing and palace fighting.
(After the withdrawal of "The World Under Chang'an", director Lian Yiming made a voice on Weibo)
The "quasi-explosive model" that was originally expected to be broadcast failed to break out in time, which made Huanrui usher in a financial crisis. As mentioned above, in the financial reports released by Huanrui in the past two years, it has repeatedly mentioned the harm caused to its own company by the failure of several backlog dramas to be broadcast as scheduled. After the "quasi-explosive model" was forced to be suspended, what new projects did Huanrui have on it?
There are both Yang Zi and Ren Jialun starring in "The Legend of the White Snake of Tianqiao", as well as "Listening to the Snow Building" starring Qin Junjie and Zhang Xueying, and the IP adaptation "Nu Hai Qiansha" and so on. However, most of these dramas have been broadcast with mediocre results, and the only slightly improved "Legend of the White Snake of Tianqiao" has also been banned by the Internet because of its religious issues.
2020 is a year of slight improvement in Huanrui Century's achievements. In this year, it handed over a costume fairy hit "Liu Li", in the later financial disclosure, Huanrui with the drama in Youku Technology to earn 0.24 billion yuan in revenue, and contributed to the company and Ali signed a film and television drama sales contract with Ali with a total of up to 558 million yuan, and its other "And Junge" starring Cheng Yi also successfully stared on Hunan Satellite TV in 2021. This is undoubtedly a great benefit to the Huanrui Century, which was in a low period at that time.
Nowadays, the books of Huanrui Century are still not very optimistic. Especially after experiencing the termination of the contract with Yang Zi last year, Huanrui urgently needs a new "one sister and one brother" to stabilize the table. However, judging from the current "Mountain River Moon Ming", which is the first to be "unsealed", Huanrui still has quite courage and courage in making ancient costume historical dramas.
This year is a crucial year for historical dramas to return to the mainstream track. After a period of time has passed since the re-broadcast of "Daming Dynasty 1566", the market has long coveted historical dramas, especially the history of costumes that need to be built with a lot of money. According to incomplete statistics, there are currently 8 historical dramas to be broadcast and filmed in the market, of which 3 are costume historical dramas, which means that costume historical dramas are still rare products in the market.
This also directly provides a new imagination space for Huanrui Century. Another backlog of costume history dramas, "Chang'an under the Heavens", also brings together a group of old drama bones, such as Zhang Hanyu, Li Xuejian and others. At present, the drama has been added to the 2022 to be broadcast drama project, if it is launched, it must be the same as the "Mountains and Rivers Moon" that was broadcast a few days ago, and there is no lack of topicality. Among the projects to be broadcast, Huanrui also has "Nanfeng Knows My Intentions", "Legend of YaoXiang", "Thousand Autumn Orders" and the xianxia drama "Agarwood Like Crumbs" that has attracted market attention, although from the basic disk point of view, these projects are not as thick as the historical theme of ancient costumes, but they are also the "light costume" themes loved by young audiences in the market nowadays.
Perhaps the shareholder wind that was affected by the policy in 2017 and owed to Huanrui Century will be made up this year. After all, in the film and television drama market of "daily love", the audience covets the new CP and the real historical drama for a long time.