When talking about the number "9527", many people's first reaction may be to think of Stephen Chow's character code in "Tang Bo Hu Dian Qiu Xiang", and now this code name has also come to Douyin.
Recently, Douyin announced that it has reached an exclusive high-quality micro-short drama cooperation with Stephen Chow. The two parties will jointly develop and operate "9527 Theater", and the first work of "9527 Theater" "Golden Pig and Jade Leaves" is produced by Stephen Chow. Produced by Yi Xiaoxing and starring A-list actresses, the first season is expected to be released to the audience in May this year.
Douyin bets wildly on short dramas
For Douyin, short dramas have become a track for frequent bets.
No one would have thought that a short drama that has been popular for a year will usher in a major player. Stephen Chow is a well-known actor, director, screenwriter, producer and producer. His masterpieces such as "The King of Comedy", "Kung Fu", "Domestic Lingling Paint", "Nine-grade Sesame Official" and "Ouchi Secret Agent Linglingfa" have influenced generations. generation of people.
Stephen Chow said, "Short plays are a rapidly developing field of technological innovation and media innovation in recent years. This time we cooperate with Douyin in the short play theater, hoping to bring more joy to the audience. I am looking forward to this new attempt. , please support me a lot." As a initiator, he will jointly unite outstanding young creators to create content directly for users based on the Douyin account of "Director Stephen Chow's Works".
This cooperation is also another move after Douyin released the "Chenxing Project" not long ago.
short plays quickly became popular due to their low investment cost, replicability, and strong monetization, becoming one of the few hot tracks in 2023.
Douyin also went out in person and arranged short plays. As early as 2019, Douyin began to recruit short drama storage capacity; in 2020, Douyin further increased its investment in micro short dramas.
In the "2020 Douyin Entertainment White Paper", Douyin clearly proposed to enter the micro-short drama track, and successively launched incentive activity plans such as the "New Program Plan" and the "Ten Million Hits Club", and later launched the " New short drama plan version 2.0."
In May 2023, Douyin also launched the "Hongguo Free Short Drama" app, which has now been renamed Tomato Short Drama.
Not long ago, Douyin announced at the "Chenxing Project" press conference that it would provide financial and traffic support to high-quality micro-short dramas for film and television companies, media organizations, mcn organizations and individual creators. In addition, Douyin's 2024 Spring Festival premium micro-short drama list was also released at the same time.
is now cooperating with Stephen Chow to develop short dramas. These actions are enough to show Douyin's determination to invest in short dramas. Behind the cooperation of
is the high-quality
short video, which is a natural creative soil for short dramas and presents a completely different content ecology and user preferences from long and short videos. From the perspective of platform value, long video short plays are mainly designed to enrich content formats and enhance the platform’s attractiveness. Short videos present ecological advantages to short plays and are the natural creative soil for short plays.
From the perspective of content production, the short video platform's lightweight short dramas are relatively more flexible in terms of investment costs and production cycles, and the threshold for content creators is lower. The partners are diverse and inclusive, benefiting film and television companies, MCN institutions, Independent producers, etc.
Entering 2024, short dramas becoming wild and high-quality have become the development trend of the industry.
Stephen Chow's works also mean classics and fine works. From the 1990s "Westward Journey" and "Fighting Back to School" to "Shaolin Football" and "Kung Fu" and other works, they have become classics in the memory of the 80s and 90s and influenced countless people.
Why Douyin short dramas are clinging to the thighs of the "King of Comedy" is actually driven by the entire short drama industry becoming more high-quality. Internet analyst Zhang Shule said: "The introduction of professional partners like Stephen Chow on Douyin is also a strategy to speed up the short dramas to become high-quality. The effect of Stephen Chow's test will directly affect whether more professional film and television workers will enter the market The determination of the short play."
Zhang Shule said that as one of the sources of various ghost and animal videos on Douyin, Stephen Chow has great content appeal.However, although Stephen Chow's comedy style has the characteristics of short dramas, its nonsensical performance does not match the aesthetic needs of the current mainstream Douyin user group. It remains to be seen whether the combination can truly be successful.
In the past year, short dramas have experienced the development of mainstreaming, compliance and quality. After the industry has experienced barbaric growth, it needs to be reshuffled and needs to move towards quality. The market must form a positive ecology where good money drives out bad money. .
iiMedia Consulting CEO Zhang Yi said in an interview with the media, "The industry structure of short drama producers is changing. Traditional film and television practitioners join with richer technical means and experience, which is also accelerating the arrival of high-quality short dramas. ."
From the perspective of a closed-loop business, only high-quality content can retain users and drive continuous value-added commercial monetization. The current business model of
short dramas includes multiple profit models such as account sharing, plot advertising placement, recharge, advertising payment, and brand customization. And commercialization will also become an important battle in the second half of the short play.
Short plays still face strong supervision
In 2023, the size of the film market is 54.9 billion, and the size of the short play market is close to 40 billion. As the
market grows, problems inevitably arise. The content of the short drama is shoddy and the values are constantly off track. According to Jiemian News, in December last year, four short dramas produced by Mimeng short drama team Tingh Island have been removed from the shelves or banned from streaming (information flow delivery), including "I Make a Million Monthly as a Substitute", " "The Sinister Maid", "Special Assistant Li is So Beautiful" and "The Black Lotus's Handbook for Ascension". Among them, "Being a Stand-in and I Make a Million a Month" was played 140 million times on Douyin
. Since then, supervision has continued to increase. On November 15, 2023, the China Internet Audiovisual Program Service Association issued a document stating that from March 2023 to the present, the State Administration of Radio and Television has supervised platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Tencent, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, and Haokan Video to clean up vulgar and harmful online content. There were more than 350,000 episodes (items) and more than 20.55 million minutes of micro-short dramas; 429 "mini programs" and 2,988 accounts that spread vulgar and harmful online micro-short dramas were dealt with in a graded manner.
On November 16 last year, Douyin issued an announcement on cracking down on illegal micro-short dramas and rectified content such as bad value orientation, violent pornography, etc.; on November 24, WeChat issued an announcement stating that the platform had removed some illegal micro-short dramas, and had Illegal mini-programs will be dealt with.
In December last year, the Beijing Radio, Film and Television Bureau disclosed that it would further promote the high-quality development of the online micro-short drama format by increasing efforts to clean up illegal and inappropriate content, establishing and improving a regular meeting system for micro-short drama management, and consolidating the main responsibilities of the platform.
Zhang Shule said that short dramas have become popular because they are more suitable for the fragmented communication characteristics of the Internet. The isomorphism of its plot and web text also illustrates its ability to attract traffic and its high adaptability to the mobile Internet. But at present, due to the popularity of short dramas, there is bound to be a problem of both mud and sand. Interestingly, a large amount of vulgar content may become a cancer in the development of short dramas.
In addition to strong supervision, Douyin short dramas are also surrounded by powerful enemies. The average daily DAU of Kuaishou short dramas reached 270 million, and the number of users of short dramas who watched more than 10 episodes per day reached 94 million, a year-on-year increase of 52.6%; in terms of creator ecology, as of the end of 2023, the number of short drama creators on the Kuaishou platform The scale has exceeded 100,000. Data shows that as of the end of 2023, the total number of Kuaishou Xingmang short dramas has been nearly a thousand, 326 works have exceeded 100 million views, 68 works have exceeded 300 million, and 4 super-hit projects have exceeded 1 billion.
In addition, Tencent Video's short drama "Invitation" set a record for micro-short dramas last year with a box office of over 20 million. The urban love mini-series "Blind Heart" earned 17 million. Youku’s “Love Lock” released last year broke 10 million in revenue. Last year, iQiyi also produced short dramas such as "The Blind Master's Little Maid" and "Republic of China Goddess Detective".
"Short plays, as the juncture of short videos and long videos, are a must-win for both parties. They are also a key point in the battle for traffic and user time between long and short video platforms. At the same time, short plays are more in line with the characteristics of online articles and are also This gives IP adaptations of web novels a greater potential, and opens up a new blue ocean possibility in the field of web novel derivatives that has always been difficult to break through," Zhang Shule said.
This cooperation between Douyin and Stephen Chow is just the beginning. It remains to be seen how the "9527" label will be used to expand its territory in the short drama industry.
is synthesized from Beijing Business Daily, 21st Century Business Herald, Jiemian News, etc.
