Fight to be the ceiling, who is making the puppet drama involution?

Text/Tehran

Recent puppet dramas have frequently rushed into the spotlight.

As soon as it entered June, Tencent Video's "Three Points" quickly became the fastest drama on the platform to exceed 28,000 since 2023, and the fastest must-see drama to enter the platform in 2023.

Immediately after, the popularity of Youku's solo broadcast "Secretly Can't Hide" exceeded 9,000, becoming the first most popular Youku premiere day in 2023; The popularity exceeded 10,000 in the first 30 hours of broadcasting, setting a record for the fastest Youku popularity to break 10,000 puppet dramas. At the same time, the show also won the TOP1 total barrage volume on the first day of broadcast of Youku dramas in 2023.

On the other hand, the number of reservations for "My Human Fireworks", which was broadcast by Hunan Satellite TV and Mango TV in early July, has exceeded one million, and iQiyi's pre-broadcast summer "He Came from the Fire", "I Want to Go Against the Wind" and Tencent Video's "The Farthest Distance" are still continuing to harvest attention.

More dazzling performance is that "Can't Hide Secretly" has repeatedly defeated "Changfeng Du" to top many authoritative popularity lists such as Yunhe, Maoyan, and Lighthouse.

Break the law

The "present puppet" counterpressed the "ancient puppet"

In the mainstream cognition of the industry, the possibility of current puppet dramas becoming popular is often lower than that of ancient puppet dramas.

Especially in the past two years.

In Yunhe's 2021, the new serial dramas are effectively broadcast for 30 days, and the ancient puppet dramas occupy 9 seats in the TOP20 of the screen list, and won the TOP1 list, while the current puppet dramas only get 5 seats; By 2022, ancient puppet dramas still occupy an absolute proportion in the list and continue to occupy the top of the list, and only two dramas in terms of puppet dramas are "The Rest of Your Life, Please Advise" and "The Two Eight Laws of Love" are on the list.

What is even more lonely is that even "The Rest of Your Life, Please Advise", which has the blessings of Xiao Zhan and Yang Zi, barely won the TOP10, and "The Twenty-Eight Laws of Love" also has the "queen of drama" Yang Mi.

So, why did "Can't Hide" achieve a reversal?

First, by fitting the original characters and original stories to the greatest extent, it effectively captures the original fans. The original work of "Can't Hide Secretly" has a collection of more than one million in Jinjiang Literature City, and the broadcast volume of the commercial radio drama of the same name has exceeded 100 million, and the IP influence and the number of fans are quite large, which means that the original fans will have an extremely intuitive impact on the market reputation, attention and playback of the drama.

This point can be strongly proved whether it is from topics such as #Zhao Lusi Sangzhi drunken crying novel restoration# to Weibo hot search, or Chen Zheyuan's Weibo rose by more than 300,000 followers in less than a week of the drama.

Second, abandon the industrial sugar sprinkling routine, and use a narrative mode that focuses on companionship and growth to tell a smaller, fresher, and more fortunate crush. Although this method has caused some controversy in terms of scale control, from the audience feedback on social platforms, it has indeed made more people feel more real emotions and emotions from it, which also laid the foundation for the show to detonate a larger audience circle.

Third, multi-dimensional strengthening of reality, no longer simply transmitting fictional love fantasies, but through broader emotional experience, deeper youth growth and self-worth identity into the "little thing of love", leading the audience to examine and learn a correct ability to love and be loved.

Involution intensifies

Genre creation enters the "deep water"

Warmed up.

While "Can't Hide Secretly" continues to stir the mainstream discourse circle of the drama market, "Illuminate You" cooperated by Tencent Video and Haitang Fruit Film was nominated for Best Director at the 18th Seoul International TV Festival in 2023, and "Go to a Windy Place" produced by Huace Film and Television was nominated for Best TV Series.

The market has been given a richer imagination, and it has also released a strong signal that the current puppet drama is actively and comprehensively upgraded.

In terms of content, while interpreting love from more diverse dimensions, puppet dramas are also making their own "strange moves" to increase realism. For example, "Go to a Windy Place" integrates social hotspots such as youth entrepreneurship, pastoral healing, and rural revitalization into the story, delicately depicting an unhurried mature love on the one hand, and providing a thinking angle for how young people can achieve self-realization and freedom of mind on the other hand.

Coincidentally, the key to the fascination of "Love Only" is not only to jump out of the stereotypical expression of the theme of "sister and brother love", but also to restore the current young people's view of career, life and emotions, and then let the audience see the sincerity of creation in the process of more reasonable plot advancement and more natural love promotion.

In terms of character setting, the male protagonist strode from the same domineering president to the elite and leader in all walks of life, such as Xu Yanshi, a navigation engineer played by Zhang Binbin in "Three Points", Qi Lianshan, a writer played by Ren Jialun in "Twilight Heart Covenant", Song Yan, a fire station chief played by Yang Yang in "My Human Fireworks", and Xu Si, an investor played by Gong Jun in "I Want to Go Against the Wind".

At the same time, the identity setting of female roles is also actively responding to the social trend of women's independence and women's rise. For example, Liang Youan, a cold and capable female elite in the workplace in "Love Only", Xu Hongdou, the independent and confident former five-star hotel front office manager in "To a Windy Place", and Nan Chu, a determined and brave dancer in "He Came from the Fire".

In terms of actor selection, actors with both traffic effect and role shaping power are increasingly favored, such as the recently launched Mango TV new drama "Camp with Love" and Youku "To Love for a Long Time", "Don't Be Moved to Me", "Love Meets Darwin", Tencent Video "In Blizzard" and "You Are More Beautiful Than Starlight" and so on.

The new competition behind the iteration

The development of any drama genre is inseparable from the two-way boost of the platform and film and television companies, so behind the increasingly noisy genre benchmarking competition, there is also a market ranking competition that you catch up.

Wen Entertainment Jun combed and found that in the next time of 2023, the competition for the right to speak in the puppet drama market between platforms will mainly revolve around Youku and Tencent Video.

In terms of Youku, although the current number of pre-booked viewers of "To Love for a Long Time" is not as good as that of "Love Meets Darwin", Wen Yujun believes that it has the possibility of pushing the development of Youku puppet dramas to a new peak, and Yule Film and Television, as the main producer, will further open its own recognition in the C-end market.

On the one hand, this is because the two leading actors of "To Love for a Long Time" Yang Zi and Fan Chengcheng have more market appeal and traffic effect; On the other hand, compared with the story setting of "Love Meets Darwin", "To Love for a Long Time", which revolves around youth and growth, has more advantages in arousing public empathy.

Among the five key puppet dramas in Tencent Video's reserve, "The Sun Accompanies Me" starring Xiao Zhan and Bai Lily and "In Blizzard" adapted from Mofei Mobao's novel of the same name are currently relatively louder.

It is worth mentioning that before the release of "Bright Sun with Me" in 2023 Tencent Video Film and Television Annual Release, iQiyi has officially announced that "Sunshine with Me" is jointly produced by iQiyi and Xinli TV, and later revealed at the 2023 iQiyi World Conference that the drama will be broadcast online in Q4 this year.

Compared with Tencent Video, "In Blizzard" is obviously more significant to Jiahang Media.

According to the Tianyancha App, Yang Mi has withdrawn from the ranks of Jiahang Media partners in early June this year. So far, Jiahang Media has only one trump card in the hands of Di Li Gerba, and although Gao Weiguang, Zhang Binbin, Zhu Xudan, Huang Mengying, etc., who were once optimistic, have maintained considerable exposure, their market appeal has not been significantly improved.

A more serious problem is that from the broadcast effect of dramas such as "Thank You Doctor", "The Twenty-Eight Law of Love" and "Speak Well", the probability of Jiahang Media creating a blockbuster drama is visible to the naked eye.