Some newer C-dramas are starting to give us some heat…
- 🔥 The hot show new drop of the week is Escape from the Trilateral Slopes, which premiered August 16 and recently hit 9k on Youku’s heat index after having just premiered a week ago. Guo Qilin (yep, the funny guy from Running Man and My Heroic Husband) stars in this intense thriller where his character gets tangled up with powerful local businessman Francis Ng.
- 🆕 Tan Jianci and Zhou Yiran‘s new historical comedy drama, Go East, is off to a strong start as it broke 8k within a couple days on iQIYI’s heat index. This will be a fun drama to track: it’s Tan Jianci’s first drama to air after Lost You Forever S2, and Zhou Yiran’s first historical drama.
- 📈 Tencent’s Are You the One (Zhang Wanyi and Wang Churan) is heating up as it hits the halfway point and just broke a heat index of 27k. Both parties — particularly Zhang Wanyi since this is yet another break out opportunity — are probably hoping for a continued push. Let’s see if they can sustain interest through the end of the show.
- 🔚 Love’s Rebellion (Jing Tian, Zhang Linghe) is certainly rebelling against something: it ended its run only managing to break 7k on iQIYI’s heat index. It was competing with the Olympics for the first few weeks of airing, but what’s it’s excuse now?.
It’s also the end of the summer, which means it’s time to eat a lot of melons 🍉 …
- 🎬 Sounds like Wu Jinyan has picked her next drama after her surprise summer hit, The Double. Rumor is that the drama, Those Flowers (回来的她们), will be a female-driven crime drama (that sound you just heard in the distance was a “YES” of excitement from us) with two female leads (Maggie Jiang is the rumored second lead) and a female director (Zhuo Li).
- 🌷 And for Wu Jinyan’s The Double co-star, Wang Xingyue, he’s apparently going to get busy acting opposite Ren Min. The xianxia drama, 凤羽令 (Feng Yu Ling) would be a prequel to Zhao Liying’s The Journey of Flower.
- 🌹 While we’re at it, another prequel to be filmed is Flower in Novoland, with rumored leads Song Weilong and Zhang Jingyi. This would belong in the broader Novoland universe, and precede Yang Mi’s 2021 drama, Novoland: Pearl Eclipse.
- 2️⃣ So about that potential War of Faith sequel… first off, it looks like Wang Yibo’s not going to return. Instead, people are saying that Wang Yang and Gao Lu would reprise their roles, but Zhou Yiran would replace Wang Yibo as Wei Ruolai and Chen Duling would be the new female lead.
- 👀 Lin Yi and Meng Ziyi have been linked to xuanhuan suspense drama 三线谜回 (San Xian Mi Hui). We usually see Lin Yi acting in campus dramas or fangirling over Liu Yifei, so this would be quite a departure from his usual.
Meanwhile, another week, another dozen September issue covers and sponsorship announcements for golden month…
- 📰 This week, Liu Yifei had a double whammy with the cover of Vogue China and Dogue, which, we’d like to point out, also features a very fluffy poodle.
- 🔐 Chen Zheyuan and Xu Kai were spotted filming for The Great Escape S6. This is Xu Kai’s second season as a regular and Chen Zheyuan’s first after some cast shakeups for Season 6.
- 💄 Some fun sponsorship news: congrats to Ni Ni for becoming Lancome’s Global brand spokesperson! In the meantime, Clinique announced Guan Xiaotong as their brand spokesperson, while Wei Daxun picked up Bobbi Brown brand ambassador in a (spoiler alert) brown suit.
- 😬 Zhang Haowei (best known for his supporting role in Joy of Life) is facing some bad allegations of solicitation of prostitution and tax evasion. If true, this would both derail his career and upcoming dramas, including Brocade Odyssey (Tan Songyun and Zhang Yecheng) and Love Has Fireworks (Tan Jianci and Wang Churan). Both dramas were rumored to drop later in 2024, but this scandal could delay or even shelve the dramas entirely.
And as always, a few changes to the C-Drama Airing Schedule this week…
- 🤞 Kill Me Love Me appears to be getting close to broadcast in the next month or so. Both leads, Liu Xueyi and Wu Jinyan, had surprise hits earlier in the year via In Blossom and The Double, respectively. This will be an interesting test to see if they can continue to hold audience attention.
- 👪 Another drama getting ready to air is Zhou Yutong’s Me and My Family. This looks like it’ll be a wholesome family drama. Zhou Yutong reunites with Li Mo, director of the 2021 hit, Remembrance of Things Past.
- ⛰️ This one is a little different from our usual drama content: Wang Yibo has a exploration documentary set to air on Tencent at the end of the month. Looks like it’ll also be broadcast on Discovery Channel, but no set broadcast time for that yet.
