Among the high profile summer period C-dramas so far I find The Longest Promise the best produced of the bunch, after the early low budget CGI it’s settled in nicely and my (and some other viewers) problems with female lead Ren Min isn’t a dealbreaker for the drama as a whole which has gotten better reviews as its progressed along. Which is why its weird that Tencent seems to be rushing this drama and not milking it’s buzz having Xiao Zhan as the male lead. The drama premiered on July 5th with little fanfare, which is true of the summer C-dramas so this isn’t unique, but what’s weird is how fast it’s run has been. Tencent will be wrapping its run for VIPs on July 17th so basically the drama will air less than two full weeks when normally platforms allot around three weeks to a month for a 40-episode run in order to build buzz and maximize views. Summer of 2023 has been wild so far and this outlier adds to the weirdness going on in C-ent.
How is the show going in terms of viewership?
I think it started out pretty bland but it gets better as it goes along and hopefully soon (I am at ep. 10) Xiao Zhan’s character will not be 18 years old anymore!
Koala, if u ask me, isn’t it the same has them doing express package for all their dramas when is about to end.i don’t see anything weird or strange about this . If lost u forever premier is true, they might want to start prepping the way for it.At this point most people r expecting to be the biggest summer hit or locus book.
It must be because they’ve met their bottomline from selling it to Netflix.
Drama start airing on 2/7 and ending on 20/7 that’s a good 3 weeks running with 2 new episodes everyday for VIP and non VIP. The did open a “fast track” which existing VIP need to buy in order to watch ep 35-40 all at once. And that’s them milking it. Buying fast track ticket on top of VIP just scream “give me moneyyy” from Tencent though. So I’dont get where the rushing part you were talking about. For TLP I don’t think Tencent need to built momentum at all because marketing sides, the ads promo has been packed from the 1st episode till recent one. For words of mouth yeah, they indeed need to stretch it out longer. But so far this drama reputation is quite good already, people been talking about it. And for xianxia this drama is quite short, running for only 40 ep.
Whatever happens to C ent is not surprising to me. It’s well known that Tencent along with other big private companies such as Alibaba has been suppressed and financially hammered by their own government because of the ideology the new leader has been promoting across that country. News has been circulating all over the media including prestigious WSJ, Financial Times, CNBC, and NYT etc. for at least a year. Tencent, as the biggest C ent conglomerate, has been “disciplined” frequently by the C government including the shakeup of upper management and tightened grip by the CCP. It’s all to do with CCP’s taking more control of capitals. How the new management and most significantly, the party secretary for the company want to run the business is UNKNOWN. Per the directions from Xi, they may not want to see people pursuing too much entertainment nor any explosive popularity enjoyed by any entertaining programs or celebrities. Online gaming is one prominent example. Tencent, once the largest gaming company around the world and successfully produced quite a few popular games in the industry, has lost huge profits from gaming products recently thanks to the crackdown by the CCP.
I personally don’t think the current one-man regime would like to see people crazy about particular culture (other than nationalism) or person. The party leaders are paranoiacs. So it makes sense for all the high-profile dramas to premiere without any promos and rush to wrap up without any fanfare. It looks like following a uniform policy from above. The current party leaders just don’t like celebrities’ popularity unless it’s tapped for the purpose of propaganda, e.g., The Youth Memories. As a fan of Xiao Zhan, I enjoy The Longest Promise way ore than The Youth Memories. I think TLP is a better drama than TYM overall and by the genre, the popularity and rating of TLP are also supposed to exceed the relevant numbers of TYM. But nope! I wonder if there’s some deliberate data manipulation behind those ratings. Statistics are usually not transparent inside China anyway. So this is plausible for the purpose to promote state propaganda and have TYM stand out more than TLP.
Gosh, I was away on vacation and someone is regurgitating their political nonsense here again. Gentle reminder, that’s not a XZ fan.
As for Koala, I stand by my previous words, the CGI in The Longest Promise is NOT low budget at all. A good example of low budget CGI should be Legend of Anle instead.
Gosh! I’ve been too busy with work to visit the site. Then same ppl are as obstinate as mules insisting on baseless allegations! You’re equally paranoid like your Chinese government. It has become pointless to keep arguing with you Xiao Zhan is my only bias. C netizens have been circulating similar theories about the politics played in Tencent behind drama productions that has been affecting how dramas were delivered and rated on the company’s streaming site. Like it or not, you can’t deny the fact that CCP has been tightening control of highly profitable industries including entertainment sector. Perhaps your loyalty to a despicable regime made you so easily irritated and become unreasonable. If one read my 10/10 review raving about Xiao Zhan and The Longest Promise in IMDB along with many other comments defending XZ on social media, nobody would ever doubt I’m a staunch fan of XZ. Liking XZ doesn’t have to be liking his government. Can’t you tell the difference? lol