Man, getting to be top billed sounds great until you realize you have to find a costar that’s willing to ride shotgun and still be good enough. That’s why there is so many C-dramas that feel lopsided and why it’s harder to get that perfect mutually equal chemistry. C-actor Liu Yu Ning is coming off a hit performance and drama turn in A Journey to Love and will be top billed as male lead for his next drama which is a period romance title Shu Juan Yi Meng (书卷一梦 or A Dream in a Scroll). Earlier it was rumored the female lead would be Li Yi Tong but now all talks are that Yang Chao Yue would will get the role. I feel like Liu Yu Ning won an award only to be told psych sorry there is nothing in the prize if this is the casting. Nevertheless I’ll still watch whatever he’s in because I feel like he’s really elevating his acting in recent years.
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Oh dear.
Top billing, but if she hadn't improved by then....
NO.
Unless she’s taken acting lessons, he should stay clear.
It’s going to be night and day in the skills of his leading ladies…..from Cecilia Liu to Zhao Lusi to this! Smh.
I wonder who keeps giving her leading roles when it’s obvious that she doesn’t have the skills to sustain or at least fake it convincingly.
Indeed. The drama will get torched if she stars in it. Even with just LYN there will be trouble, with all his rabid haters.
In the case where cast is weak, I will pay more attention on the story and dialogue and directing before dismissing the show. Someone has to come from somewhere. Some very A lister still are terribly bad actors.
Oh dear, someone must really hate poor LYN to give him such a co-star. This fluff cotton-ball who pretends to be an actress is a punishment for any decent actor who is paired with her. Whatever the scene, her only facial expression is pouted lips and wide-open eyes. If someone replaced her with a blow-up doll nobody would notice the difference.
I hope and I pray that this isn’t the final casting decision, because Liu Yuning deserves better and so does the audience.
OMG! It's her.
I hope she's better at her crat.
She was a bit cringey in most of the dramas.
Likely a drama i will skip unless the storyline and production is enjoyable.
Glad Li Yitong won't be attached to this project anymore so I don't have to force myself to watch it. Good luck to YCY and LYN.
LYN and YCY were in another drama together with Zeng Shun Xi which is I totally skipped solely because of YCY. Why she keeps getting lead roles?? She should started from the bottom while taking acting lesson just like LYN.
If this is the price he needs to pay to get first billed, he might as well just stay as second billed to good actress
Truly, billing is not important, good result shoold be more important. Look ta how zls fights for top billing and end up with mediocre drama.
Nope, Nope that not fair, ZLS is not the only actor or actress who is topped billed to get a mediocre show n no one knows if a show will be mediocre or good unless all is said n done. If any actor want to be top billed at some point, they all need to start from somewhere. N yes has someone commented before billing is clearly important to this stars and their fans, it might involve more than who get more money, that we do not know of, my guess is experience, better acting, number of scenes, actors who bring in audiences, all plays a role in to billing. Not every show is like this of course because some shows leads agree to share equal billing depending on the project or prestige of both stars.
So, there're actual monetary rewards attached to billing status? That's the question.
@Mercy
Of course I know it’s not just zls that fight for top billing, a lot does it, but her drama is particularly recent. They should stop making it about screentime, fame, credit, or anything. A drama is not just one or two people work, hundred people efforts are in this. Choosing drama to act in should be about how good the script, how skilled is the director, and how reliable the production house. If artist keep choosing top billed like that, yes if the drama is successful they get all the recognition but if it fails then they become the punching target.
Does the billing status have any practical implication? Pay or just fame? Only C-ent has such a weird casting practice.
That's not even remotely true. It's been something to fight about from Hollywood to Broadway. Billing is important in all performance arts, it's just that the fans are more radical in cent so the fights are wider. Usually it's just stars battling it out behind the scenes with their agencies.
In China it has the practical application of the success of the drama or the movie "belonging" to the first billed star(s). So when the drama gets certain amount of views that constitutes a major hit that will be attributed only to the first billed star. General awards, same. Box office, same.
I was talking about real pay. Does first billing means highest pay among all the cast? I heard about in some cases veteran actors actually got higher pays than the leading liuliang. If this is true, then no point to fight for billing order. Money matters more. LOL
@Somebody It's not that hard to understand. It's just like company projects. The person in charge of the project claims the largest credit for the project's success. The person-in-charge can straightforwardly be a veteran manager, or it can also be a newbie employee who is the son of the CEO while the veteran manager helps him from the sides as a consultant.
The veteran manager will of course still be taking higher pay than the newbie employee who is the CEO's son, until the newbie employee gets promoted of course.
Money does not matter more.
If someone is a liuliang and already has huge amounts of money then what they need is recognition to up their reputation. Therefore they will act in a drama with veteran actors that essentially carry the whole thing.
The drama has good reviews, the credit goes to the liuliang, not the veteran actors. The drama gets an award nomination, the credit goes to the liuliang. That is way more precious than money in a career that is time limited if they can't move up.
The analogy of veterans and CEO's son working together in a company makes sense. But what does that mean by credits going to liuliang if he can't actually act but his veteran costars carry the drama instead? It just doesn't sound right. For example, a certain liuliang's obsessed fans always love raving about his high-profile movies in which he worked with very famous and good veteran actors. The point is HE CAN'T ACT IMO. It doesn't make sense to me he's credited for those movies cos he's obviously not the one carrying those projects.
That's how real life works. Unfair? Yep. But the industry status is always constantly updating. CEO's son can garner as much credits as he can now with veteran managers' help, but ultimately there will come a time where he has to shoulder projects on his own. He will then come face to face with reality and fall hard onto the ground. Feeding resources requires money. If he never recoup enough money for the company, the company will eventually replace him or go bankrupt.
And people do know who should get the actual credits. Some could be deceived once or twice, but over time, word will spread. Then there are others who choose to turn a blind eye to it because they can make money off it. There have been so many cases where you see tons of marketing claiming that certain dramas/movies have exploded to popularity, yet there is no noticeable improvement to the quality of the leads' project offers and endorsements.
@somebody
Welcome to reality of Chinese entertainment. That's how it works, nobody said it was fair or right, but that is how it is.
And yes, that actor is famous for attaching himself to veterans for this very reason.