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Although the countdown to 2023 is still ongoing, the radar of the drama-following audience is already aimed at 2024 and continues to sound.
On December 27, the TV series "Flowers" was launched. As Wong Kar-wai's "Descending to Earth" work, the original work is adapted from the novel of the same name won by writer Jin Yucheng's "Five One Project" and Mao Dun Literature Award, and starring Hu Ge, Ma Yili, Tang Yan, and Xin Zhilei.
Two days after the broadcast, the audience was also "judging" the show with unprecedented enthusiasm. On the Weibo hot search list, related topics range from ratings, discussion of drama style and texture to actors' acting skills, business war plots, shooting techniques, lens aesthetics, and female characters. The polarization of public opinion has once again cast a layer of fog over this "strong style" TV series: it needs more time to be viewed objectively and fairly.
"Flowers" is certainly not the only big drama at the beginning of the year. Judging from the network news, the head dramas that are ready to go include "If Life Is Like First Seen", "Dajiang Dahe 3", "Love for a Long Time", etc., and the "Sword and Fairy" series of "The Legend of Sword and Fairy 4" and "Six Prayers for Sword and Fairy" are also expected to be broadcast, covering urban love, costume fairy, modern revolution, suspense crime, etc.
It's a matchup that's destined to be exciting. But returning to the market, why is it worth betting heavily on the "New Year's file"? Who can win the "jackpot" of this year's drama market?
Why is the market betting heavily on the "New Year's file"?
The opening of the New Year often refers to the entire period from the New Year's Eve to the Spring Festival. What does this period mean for the market?
Taking 2023 as an example, the popular "Hurricane", "Going to a Windy Place", which has the peak of word-of-mouth for the current couples of the year, and "The Three-Body Problem", which opened up the pioneer of domestic science fiction dramas, will all be broadcast during this period. In addition, in the list of effective playback of Yunhe Data's H1 dramas, the top-ranked "Walking to the Wind", "Youth Song Xing", and "Even if the Wind Rises" are also representatives of the New Year's dramas of various satellite TV and platforms.
Entertainment unicorns counted the New Year's dramas and their performances from 2015 to 2023, and found that this kind of situation that has become the representative of the year's hits at the beginning of the year and set the tone for the year's development has long been a common phenomenon:
It is mainly reflected in two aspects, one is a work that is unbeatable in terms of broadcast volume and market popularity. In 2022's "The World" and 2021's "Son-in-law", the effective playback of Yunhe's feature films has approached 5 billion, ranking first in the annual list. In 2020, although "Celebrating More Than Years" has ended in the early stage of the new year, there are also "Love Apartment 5", "Under the Brocade", and "New World" in the TOP5 of the year.
In 2019's "Do You Know If You Should Be Green, Fat, Red and Thin", and in 2017's "Three Lives, Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms", the number of feature films has exceeded 10 billion. In particular, the former has become a representative of long-tail dramas: from 2020 to 2022, it has continuously ranked among the top 20 effective broadcasts of Yunhe Data's feature films as an "old drama".
Even on the satellite TV side, the New Year's drama also performed outstandingly. For example, the average rating of "The Legend of Wu Meiniang" in 2015 was 2.959%, and it also ranked among the top TV dramas in the past ten years.
The other is to lay the peak of word-of-mouth, which has important pioneering significance for the market. For example, the "Three-Body Problem" mentioned above, and for example, in 2022, "The Beginning" will be fully out of the circle, setting off a boom of unlimited streaming themes throughout the year, and in 2021, "Mountains and Seas" and "Awakening Age" as the main theme themes have achieved the annual word-of-mouth peak and become a win-win winner of Magnolia that year.
The record of the opening of the year is outstanding, of course, there is a "benefit of the schedule". As an important schedule for family carnival, whether it is the TV era or the Internet era, there is no doubt that the platform focuses on broadcasting, and the head drama itself means big IP, big production team, and big actors, although it cannot be directly equated with high quality and high reputation, but it can be regarded as winning at the starting line.
The "benefits of the schedule" are also reflected in the unique social environment of the New Year's file. Although online drama chasing has shortened the distance between the public, the interspersed with important holidays such as New Year's Day and Spring Festival has also brought natural benefits to the fermentation of dramas, such as the wave of chasing "Hurricane" on the high-speed rail returning home last year has become evidence of the popularity of the series, and once again helped the popularity to ferment. The Xi of contemporary netizens playing memes while chasing dramas is also very easy to form new out-of-the-circle hot terriers due to strong interaction during this period.
But in the end, it's all about continuing to deliver high-quality content, respecting the aesthetic changes of the audience, and daring to break the homogeneity of innovation. You may wish to interpret it through the changes in the genre of the subject:
First, costume dramas are an evergreen track at the beginning of the year, which is mainly due to the fact that the costume drama market is basically large, and most of them appear in the form of large traffic and big IP, but if you are specific, it includes: the change from the big heroine walking alone to the continuous rise of male frequency;
Second, the family carnival is naturally compatible with the main theme and realistic themes, but the layout of the big dramas at the beginning of the year is also undergoing a transformation from war dramas and spy war dramas to "new main themes". Represented by "Big River" in 2019, "Mountains and Seas" and "Awakening Age" in 2021, the main theme has gradually become synonymous with high reputation and national orientation;
Third, the opening of the year has become an outlet for innovative themes. Compared with the previous ancient costumes and love dominating the New Year's file, new themes such as "The Beginning" and "The Three-Body Problem" have emerged in the market in the past two years, and they also coincidentally chose to broadcast it in the New Year's file, which made the audience refreshed and did make a good start to the year.
Ten years have passed, and the substantive significance of "New Year's Files" for the national drama market is definitely not inferior to that of summer files, and as the beginning of the new year, the market changes it bred will often become the vane of the next drama scheduling and platform layout. At the beginning of 2024, what kind of story will be written?
Who can win the 2024 drama market "jackpot"?
According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 12 TV series that will be broadcast in January 2024 or are currently on the air. Standing in the first gear is none other than "Flowers" and "Big River 3".
Let's watch "Flowers" first. At present, this drama can be regarded as maintaining a delicate balance between the director's style and market preferences: on the one hand, Wong Kar-wai's strong image style has indeed brought us a gorgeous audio-visual feast. "When chasing dramas, I can't help but take screenshots frequently, each one is to the extent that it can be used as a wallpaper, and the film-like shots are simply amazing!"
On the other hand, the TV series has changed Wong Kar-wai's narrative style and is known for its fast pace and amount of information. At the beginning of the series, Mr. Bao's car accident was used as an introduction, and all the relevant characters appeared in the police interrogation, and the words were full of suspense. After that, Mr. Bao's family history and business wars were closely arranged, and the fate of Mr. Bao, three completely different women, uncle, Mr. Fan, Tao Tao and other characters also began to affect the hearts of the audience.
Judging from the plot layout and narrative rhythm of "Flowers", this should be a process that is as in-depth as it looks. At the data level, the TV series has also initially caught the public's expectations: on the Maoyan Professional Edition, the show has been ranked first in popularity since it was launched, and the popularity value of Tencent Video has also exceeded 26,000. However, the follow-up quality and whether it can become a hit at the beginning of the year still have to be left to time.
"Big River 3" is also a representative of the long-awaited beginning. At the beginning of 2019, "Dajiang Dahe" premiered, not only won the record of breaking 1% on both stations and breaking 5 billion online broadcasts, but also topped the national drama word-of-mouth list that year with a Douban score of 8.9;At the beginning of 2021, "Dajiang Dahe 2" was broadcast, and the Douban score once soared to 9.4 points (now 8.8 points), but the popularity and webcast volume have declined.
As one of the most successful drama IPs created by Noon Sunshine, the "Big River" series has precipitated a group of loyal viewers. Now the third part of the re-battle is the end of the year's file, and it is the final chapter of the fate of the characters, which can be described as a topic. In addition, new powerful actors such as Huang Jue, Liu Dan, and Liang Chao were also added to the play, the first two of which were the "Aunt Pot" and the driver who became popular in "The Beginning".
can be classified into the second gear, including "If Life Is Like First Seen", "Love for a Long Time" and "Black Soil Without Words". The former is undoubtedly in terms of the quality of the series, directed by Wang Wei, written by Jiang Qitao, etc., starring Li Xian, Wei Daxun, etc., but the problem is that it is difficult to finalize the file, and after several twists and turns, it is now again missing the 27th that was spread on the Internet. However, the market expectation of the show has always remained high, and the reservation value of the platform exceeded 3 million early.
"To Love for a Long Time" is an urban romantic drama, and its most important attraction is actually the starring Yang Zi. In 2023's "Sauvignon Blanc Season 1", Yang Zi once again proved her ability to carry dramas to the market, and she is also the representative of 90 flowers with the most popular masterpieces at the moment. However, it is also worth noting that the current rout in 2023 has also dampened the enthusiasm of the audience, which will also be the biggest test for the TV series in the early days of broadcasting: quickly building market trust.
"Black Soil Without Words" is a suspenseful criminal investigation theme, starring Chen Jianbin , Hu Jun , and Deng Jiajia. What's more, it is the 4th drama that Tencent X Theater is about to launch. In 2023, Tencent X Theater has completely established a reputation for quality with "The Long Season" and "Under the Prosperous City", and the label effect has directly established the market trust of the show.
In addition to the head dramas, there are many "drama N generations" at the beginning of this year, in addition to "Big River 3", there is also "Detective Chinatown 2" that can also belong to this series. Although the series is more famous as a movie, in 2020, as the first part of iQiyi's New Year's drama, it also received good market attention, and the cloud collection was broadcast and ranked 12th on the annual list.
The "Legend of Sword and Fairy 4" and "Six Prayers for Sword and Fairy" series of "Sword and Fairy" are also listed. As the ceiling IP of Xianxia dramas for countless audiences, the market is not optimistic about these two dramas, especially after the remake and adaptation of classics continue to hit the streets, the expectations are even lower. However, it is not ruled out that these two dramas may also have their own audiences: starring Yu Shuxin and Chen Zheyuan have become popular in the past two years and have their own fan base.
On the whole, although the big dramas at the beginning of 2024 are more evenly distributed in terms of subject types, costume dramas and urban love are slightly weak in terms of the number of dramas, and it may be difficult to become an effective way to generate explosive models. In fact, this has also continued the trend of the New Year's dramas in the past two years, compared with the beginning of the year, the summer file is the biggest outlet for the birth of costume dramas.
And judging from the audience's preference for fresh themes in recent years, maybe you can really bet on "Flowers". At the word-of-mouth level, there are also "Dajiang Dahe 3" and "Black Soil Without Words", which can support the market expectations of the new year. In addition, there has never been a shortage of surprises in the drama market in the past two years. But everything has to be seen after the broadcast.
Looking forward to 2024, the drama market will continue to start the year with high energy.