Supporting Actor Li Ming De’s Role in Legend of the Female Lead Gets AI Face Swap and Tencent Aims to Broadcast the Drama this Month in March
This is probably as good as it gets for Tencent sitting on the fully finished and high profile period C-drama Legend of the Female General with Zhou Ye and Cheng Lei. In early January there was word that Tencent was going to air the drama at the end of that month around lunar new year. Then a week late supporting actor Li Ming De went off the rails at the start of filming his new drama (long story) and created a scandal, which wasn’t even that bad and could have been overcome if he laid low for a month or two, but then late February the dude went and got himself arrested after drunkenly beating up a car in the parking lot. Formally getting in trouble with the law (arrest or government fine) is the bright red line in C-ent so it looked bleak for the drama until this week when it was revealed that after his first scandal Tencent already decided to replace him so his role has been re-filmed with a new actor and will be AI face swapped. His role as the third male lead can’t be fully excised so this is as good as it gets for the drama to air. Tencent is reportedly aiming for a late March release.
Something tells me we will be seeing a lot AI face swapping in the near future for Chinese dramas. Just saying.
Yes…cheap way to film a drama…
If the techonology gets both cheap and high quality – absolutely. Popular actors/models with pretty faces will “license” their faces and pump out dramas with very little work.
I think it will be more about rescuing all the other dramas that have been shelved for one of their actors getting cancelled. I seriously doubt they will be using AI instead of actors.
Only if the actors keep breaking the law, otherwise I don’t think @Zoro’s theory below will come true any time soon. It’s still costly to swap faces with AI now.
The main actors are gearing up for promo so it’s most likely a March/April release. The novel is great, hopefully the crew brings that to the drama.
Yees yes yes please. I cant wait for this drama. Finally… one of my most anticipated dramas.
I just hope they faithfully capture character arcs and conflict of the original story. Bring the story to life on screen.
Actors are humans after all. People do make mistakes but Al face swapping? Cruel to him. Chinese actors/actresses have to be at their best at all times. Very depressing!