Let’s take a look at how C-dramas are faring right now…
- 🤏 The First Shot (Johnny Huang, Wang Ziqi, Xie Keyin) remains tantalizingly close to breaking a 10k heat index, but not there yet… it’s been hovering around 9.8k for the past few days. We’re now entering the last third of the drama, so let’s see if it can make a quick push to 10k.
- 🔚 A few dramas are winding down and getting their Douban ratings. Go East (Tan Jianci, Zhou Yiran) is off to a strong rating of 7.1, although it never blew up the iQIYI heat index and peaked at 8.3k. On the other hand, Melody of Golden Age with Ryan Ding and Deng Enxi didn’t make a big splash with either its TV ratings or its Douban rating of 5.8.
- 🆕 The new drama of the week is Tencent’s Love of Nirvana, starring Ren Jialun and Li Landi. It’s still too early to see what numbers it’ll have, but Ren Jialun is probably hoping for a big hit after Burning Flames didn’t exactly burn up the circuit earlier this year.
- 🌬️ Sun Qian and Zhai Zilu’s new drama, Wind Direction, is now on iQIYI and CCTV-8. This ‘90s coming-of-age drama hasn’t torn up the charts yet, but looks like it might be steadily climbing up TV ratings.
Melons were a little slow this week, but we’ve always a few coming through 🍉…
- 🏫 Esther Yu has been linked to 双轨 (Shuang Gui or Double Track), a modern drama about a sibling pair that is split up after their parent’s divorce. We’re excited to see Esther in some drama rumors — she’s been a little quiet on the melon front since Ski Into Love wrapped in June.
- 👀 Now this is a throwback…William Chan and Lay Zhang are reportedly linked to The Mystic Nine 2, a whole eight years after it aired in 2016. If it does happen, it’s unlikely that all the main leads would be able to return (Zhao Liying isn’t mentioned in the rumors, for example), but we’ll take William and Lay back on our screens anytime.
- 🔬 Song Yi and Jin Shijia are gearing up for a medical suspense drama named Unnatural, based on the Japanese drama of the same name. The drama is set to be directed by Ding Hei, who also directed popular modern dramas The Hope and Ordinary Greatness (both with Zhang Ruoyun).
- 🌸 An update on Flower in Novoland… a few weeks ago, it looked like the role would go to Zhang Jingyi and Song Weilong. From the latest melons, it looks like Chen Zheyuan is now the rumored male lead while Yang Huan, the director of Lost You Forever, is set to direct the project.
- 🚨 Joseph Zeng has been linked to crime drama 刍狗之血 (Chu Gou Chi Xue) with Nick Cheung and Myolie Wu. It’s supposed to start filming in September, so we might get confirmation sooner rather than later.
Our usual Chinese entertainment news roundup…
- 💘 There were so many dating rumors this past week that we wrote up a separate post…read about what happened here! Spoiler alert, there was a rare marriage confirmation.
- 🎂 Happy birthday to Yang Mi, who got birthday wishes not only from long-time friend Liu Shishi, but also a L’Officiel China cover to celebrate.
- 🔥 Deng Wei is on fire with his magazine covers — he scored the October issue of Madame Figaro Men after two covers in September. He’s been a little quiet on the drama front (hasn’t filmed anything since February), but that clearly isn’t holding him back.
- 🧥 September Fashion Week continues! Tan Jianci flew into New York for Michael Kors after his recent title upgrade, while Gulinazha attended the Coach show (she’s global brand ambassador). New York Fashion Week ended a few days ago, but never fear, we’ve still got London, Milan, and Paris to go (in that order).
- 👟 On the endorsement side: Wang Yibo became the first male Global Brand Ambassador for Jimmy Choo in some very nice and very expensive sneakers. In the meantime, Bai Lu became Chantecaille’s Greater China Makeup Spokesperson, and Li Xian nabbed brand spokesperson for Abercrombie & Fitch.
- 🏆 It’s award season! The Feitian Awards (also known as Flying Apsaras Awards) are on September 21, get ready for the red carpet looks! Some of the dramas nominated include Blossoms Shanghai, Ordinary Greatness, The Youth Memories, and Love Between Fairy and Devil. We’ll report back next week on the results!
As for our C-Drama Airing Schedule updates…
- ✅ We’ve got confirmation!! Zhao Lusi and Peng Guanying’s rumored drama together (we wrote about it here) is confirmed and named Almost Lover, a modern drama about two friends who encounter each other at multiple stages of life. Good news for all of us tracking Zhao Lusi’s Love’s Ambition fits, may the Almost Lover set continue to be her runway.
- ⚔️ Yang Yang’s Zhan Zhao Adventures has officially started filming! He’ll be joined by Zhang Ruonan, Fang Yilun, and Zhang Yuxi in the wuxia drama. They gifted us a little teaser to get everyone excited here.
- 🌳 Rumors originally thought that Chen Zheyuan and Liang Jie’s The White Olive Tree would air in September, but recent chatter puts it later in the year. But never fear, Chen Zheyuan is still expected on our screens this month for Dark Night and Dawn (likely in a few days!).
- ☁️ Congrats to A Dream Within a Dream for wrapping a few days ago! This historical transmigration story stars Li Yitong and Liu Yuning and was directed by Guo Hu, director of Mysterious Lotus Casebook and One and Only. Check out the wrap-up trailer here.
- 🌙 Moonlight Mystique with Bai Lu and Ao Ruipeng is moving closer to broadcast and has received its distribution license. There have been rumors for months that they’re trying to release it quickly (filming wrapped in February), and now it seems like it’ll be released at the end of the year.
