Text | Entertainment Herald, Author | After Rain, Editor | Fan Zhihui
"Rebirth", which was only one step away from becoming a hit, was completely unfinished.
A Rashomon scam triggered by a memorial service, in the form of "room escape + script killing", unearthed the darkest side of human nature. Five people actually knew a completely different Feike. As the mystery was gradually revealed , netizens directly called: "Everyone is evil". As a result, in the finale, only Fei Ke's injured world was achieved. Everyone deceived Fei Ke, and he actually drowned to save the heroine, which is called the worst male protagonist in history.
Although before the finale of "The New Life" was broadcast, the plot was reversed layer by layer, which was extremely brain-burning, the word-of-mouth was out of the circle, and it was also launched on Netflix. However, according to Beacon data, when the finale of "The New Life" ended, the popularity value on Youku was the highest at 9568 , it is only a little bit away from the standard of a hot item on the site with over 10,000 hits. In addition to "Rebirth", Youku White Night Theater's suspense drama "Dark Fire" also failed to perform well. During the broadcast, the popularity value of "Dark Fire" on the site just exceeded 8,000.
At the same time, iQiyi Mist Theater launched the suspense drama "Untold", which competes with Youku's newly upgraded White Night Theater at the same time. However, the popularity of this drama on iQiyi's site has just exceeded 8,000.
Overall, in the first half of this year, there was not a single suspense drama that could hit the market. I wonder who will be the hit in the second half of the year.
1 Which brand of suspense is the best?
In 2020, iQiyi's Mist Theater took the lead in detonating the suspense drama war, and established a golden label with "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth".
Youku followed closely and launched the suspense theater, and launched works such as "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" and "Gate of Rebirth". On April 22 this year, Youku upgraded the suspense theater to the White Night Theater and successively launched " "Gloomy Fire" and "Rebirth".
Tencent Video started a little late, and only launched the x theater in 2023, but it broke through with two high-quality suspense dramas " The Long Season " and " Under the Busy City ".
Compared with iQiyi and Youku labels, Tencent Video After all, fate cannot withstand the cruelty of the times. Although
Mango TV does not have a label dedicated to suspense dramas, it has taken the lead in creating a suspense track for women, and has successively launched works such as "Jiang Zhao Liming", " gift ", "The Lost Child", and "19th Floor". However, Mango has always been good at variety shows and weak in drama series. At present, Mango’s suspense dramas lack popular hits and are temporarily lagging behind Ayouteng. In order to continuously upgrade its position and consolidate the moat of the suspense track,
has staged scenes of overt and covert battles comparable to those in suspense dramas on various major platforms.
Youku poached Zijin Chen in 2021 and is expected to launch ten super online dramas in the next five years. Zijin Chen also temporarily named the female suspense trilogy "Double Star", "Gray Vortex" and "Deep Pit". At the same time, Youku also introduces film directors into the lineup of suspense dramas, serving as producers and directors, such as the recently popular "New Life". Director Shen Yu's last work was the movie " desperate ". "New Life" also continues the pua, butchering. Distribution, fraud and other issues. Among the films to be aired at White Night Theater, Zhang Yimou produces "Snow Maze" and Cao Baoping produces "Once Upon a Time on the Edge of Water." The presence of film directors may bring breakthroughs to suspense dramas.
Tencent Video positioned itself as a high-quality short drama through This year, Tencent Video is expected to launch 13 suspense dramas, of which 9 dramas will be launched on x theater.
In a sense, Tencent Video and Youku are constantly encroaching on iQiyi’s hinterland in the field of suspense dramas. The loss of
's high-quality team has led to iQiyi's rapid decline in the field of suspense dramas in recent years, and the audience's expectations for Mist Theater have also been decreasing year by year. This year's Mist Theater will launch works such as "The Boy Who Can't See a Shadow", " Dislocation", "Twenty-One Days", "Above the Dark Clouds" and " Justifiable Defense". Among them, the audience has higher expectations for "Crime Hunters 2".
The last hit movie on Youku was "White Night". According to the film list released by White Night Theater, the sequel "White Night" is not among them. It is unknown whether it will be released as scheduled this year, or whether it will be unfinished. Since "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth", iQiyi has yet to come up with a suspense drama that satisfies the audience. A Douban netizen unceremoniously left a message under "Who is the Murderer": "Now I know that "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth" are two special cases." Tencent Video "" doesn't have too many splashes, and I don't know when I can wait for the next "Long Season".
From this point of view, although the suspense track is crowded, there are only a handful of high-quality ones.
Lighthouse data shows that the number of effective dramas in the online drama market in 2023 is 294, a decrease of 10.6% from last year. In the context of cost reduction and efficiency improvement, the share of suspense dramas is also declining year by year. As for when the next hit suspense drama will be born, it will test how the platform seeks innovation and change.
02 Suspense dramas are popular and difficult to make
Since this year, it seems that it has become the norm for suspense dramas to "not be popular" one after another.
html At the beginning of 2000, Tencent Video , the drama version " Three Brigades " adapted from non-fiction literature is also far less popular than the movie version...I thought that after the suspense drama rolled through in the q1 quarter, it would make a breakthrough in the q2 quarter, but I never thought that it would still be a hit Hard to find. However, when the audience is tired of the distorted ancient puppet dramas, brainless sweet pet dramas, and suspended urban dramas, focusing on realist themes, some suspense dramas with a movie quality still have the potential to become hits.
Take "White Night" as an example. This drama uses twin brothers to exchange identities back and forth and join forces to investigate cases as the main line, and they are linked together through unit investigation. Every case in the play is a high-intelligence crime, and each character does not completely trust each other. It can be said that the average person has eight hundred tricks. Because of this, while this drama tortures human nature, the group portraits are also multi-dimensional and the plot has ample room for interpretation.
In addition, the cast of the suspense drama is basically all experienced actors, which to a certain extent ensures the quality of the work. Pan Yueming plays two roles and was even ridiculed by Douban netizens: "Pan Yueming vs. Pan Yuedan". These are the reasons why the suspense drama is popular.
However, it is extremely challenging for suspense dramas to achieve both word-of-mouth and ratings. Suspense dramas in recent years have often been disappointing due to various reasons.
For example, "The Returned Daughter" brings together veteran actors such as Wang Yanhui and Mei Ting, as well as the new generation of powerful actor Zhang Zifeng. The beginning focuses on the secrets hidden by a family, and integrates plots such as disappearance, shelter, and impersonation. The suspense is high, but the ending is hard to tell. The plot of the protagonist forcibly losing his wits left the audience with a knot in their throats.
"The Fog of the Octagonal Pavilion" has a confusing plot and too many family ethics scenes, which weakens the suspense element and wastes the veteran cast such as Zu Feng, Duan Yihong, Hao Lei, and Wu Yue. "The Corridor Pavilion", which has only 12 episodes, was criticized by the audience for being too watery in the plot. The sister-brother love scenes and business war plots took up a lot of space, and the later plot direction was more like a "crazy drama". The drama version of "The Three Troops" aired last year, with the movie version going first, allowed the audience to predict the ending, and the sense of suspense was insufficient. Moreover, the two-hour movie turned into a 24-episode TV series, and the pace was inevitably slow.
When suspense dramas of varying quality are launched one after another, hit movies have become a mystery. But this does not affect the various platforms to increase their efforts and accelerate the layout of suspense dramas.
03 The source of popular hits is high-quality suspense IP
Looking at the successful cases of Aiyouteng’s popular suspense dramas, we can see that the source of popular hits still has to be traced back to high-quality IP.
Zijin Chen's three works "Undocumented Crime", "Bad Boy" and "Long Night" were adapted into web dramas "Undocumented Crime", "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth" respectively.But after becoming popular, Zijin Chen only published the first edition of a new book, "Long Night: Double Star", which scored 6.5 on Douban. Its reputation is not as good as before. After cooperating with Youku, Zijin Chen has not yet had an adapted drama released.
This just shows that suspense IP cannot rely too much on a certain writer. In addition to Zijin Chen, Ma Boyong, who is good at ancient costume suspense, and Shuang Xuetao, Zheng Zhi, and Ban Yu, the "Three Heroes of the Northeast" who are famous for Northeast suspense, are all being targeted by capital. Among them, Ma Boyong bore the brunt.
After the cold winter of film and television in 2018, Ma Boyong IP happened to meet the audience's demand for high-quality products at this time, and his works themselves are also masterpieces, and are known for their historical background, integrating wide-ranging imagination, rigorous reasoning, and strong suspense. Characteristics, it is extremely suitable for film and television adaptation. "Secrets of the Three Kingdoms", "Antique Bureau Middle Game", and "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" have been launched one after another, but the quality of film and television works is uneven.
From the content point of view, Ma Boyong's novels have a grand structure and novel themes, which meet the needs of film and television adaptations. From the perspective of the drama presentation, taking "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" as an example, the twelve hours are intense, the mysteries are intricate, and the links are intertwined. The buckle caters to the audience's habit of watching dramas with suspense themes.
In addition, Ma Boyong's derivative IP has great long-tail value. In the IP industry chain, the "Wind Rises in Luoyang" IP adopts the "one fish and twelve eats" business model and has developed variety shows, dramas, games, derivatives, stage plays, animations, documentaries, comics, commercial real estate, VR 12 product forms including full sense, film and literature. When influential IP realizes the linkage of the entire industry chain, it can also create more business value.
However, the film and television works of the "Three Heroes of the Northeast" did not produce similar effects.
Shuang Xuetao's work "Moses on the Plains " adapted from the same name on Douban scored 7.6. The movie version " Fire on the Plains " is expected to be released this year. "Cowards" adapted from Zheng Zhi's work "Swallowed Alive" scored 7.7 on Douban. The movie "The Hedgehog" adapted from "The Immortal Disease" is about to be released. Currently, only "Xiaoyaoyou" among Banyu's works has been adapted into a movie and is expected to be released in October this year.
Judging from the current response, the film and television works of the "Three Heroes of Northeast China" can only be regarded as satisfactory.
Judging from their works, the "Three Heroes of Northeast China" are good at short stories, which means that there is more room for IP film adaptation and insufficient room for drama adaptation. After all, changing a 10,000-word short story into a suspense drama can easily lead to water injection. In order to fill the vacancy of high-quality IP, the platform has turned its attention to non-fiction literature. Although the performance of the
drama version of "The Three Brigades" was not successful after its release, it made an attempt to find high-quality IP. However, how to turn a feature article of tens of thousands of words into a non-water-filled suspense drama with more than 20 episodes is no less difficult than adapting a short story into a TV series, which still tests the screenwriter's skill.
"The long night must come to an end, and the truth will be revealed." This is the meaning of Youku's upgrade of the suspense theater to a white night theater. I hope that after the upgrade, Youku will produce not only one hit suspense drama, "White Night", but also hope that iQiyi and Tencent Video will no longer rest on their laurels with "The Hidden Corner" and "The Long Season" , bringing the next hit suspense drama to the market.
