director of the millennium

The TV drama production department of the entertainment company cannot afford to hire its own actors to film the drama.

It sounds funny, but it is the reality now.

China's television drama industry is also in the midst of a once-in-a-century transformation.

About thirty years ago, China's TV drama production industry was almost the same as Japan's, that is, TV dramas were all produced by the production departments of TV stations, and there were no private film and television companies.

At this stage, most of the actors were ordinary workers, most of whom had their own main jobs, that is, members of a certain drama troupe, and were only seconded by the TV station to act.

Twenty years ago, China's private film and television companies gradually began to develop. A number of companies emerged, learning from the film and television production of Hong Kong, Taiwan and even Singapore. They began to independently produce TV series and then sell them to TV stations.

At this time, real actors in the entertainment industry have been born. Most of them are signed to these film and television production companies, and then shoot TV series produced by the company itself.

Tangren Media was the leader in this period, producing a number of high-quality TV dramas and also making a number of its own artists famous.

It was during this period that Guangying Times entered the TV drama production industry and was very successful.

But after 2014, the melee among mainland video platforms had ended, and the three major video platforms, Penguin, Qiyi and Youku, were officially established.

These three companies have completed the mergers and acquisitions of other short video platforms, completely dividing up the market. They are also well aware that it is difficult for any of them to swallow up and eliminate each other, so they have begun to transform into a long-term battle.

Their long-term strategy is to start producing film and television dramas and variety shows independently, hoping to use these truly self-made and exclusive dramas to compete for video platform users.

To be honest, they were inspired by the light and shadow fast broadcast.

In this world, Guangying Kuaibo was the first company to start producing its own film and television dramas, and it also promoted this model to Japan and South Korea.

Every year, the Chinese, Japanese and Korean sites of Guangying Times produce movies and TV series themselves or in cooperation with TV stations.

These self-made and co-produced TV series are only broadcast online exclusively on Guangying Kuaibo. Other TV and film platforms are unable to purchase the copyrights, let alone negotiate for them.

It is also because of Guangying Kuaibo’s self-made strategy that this company, although backed by only a "small company" with a market value of no more than 10 billion yuan (Guangying Times), can still stand firm in the brutal competition among domestic video platforms.

Until now, although the Chinese site of Guangying Kuaibo is not the domestic video platform with the most users, it has long been ranked third and is competing with Penguin for the second place.

Of course, if global users are counted, Guangying Kuaibo is definitely the number one. Currently, Guangying Kuaibo has 8 million monthly active users in Japan, 3 million monthly active users in South Korea, and a total of 14 million monthly active users in Southeast Asia.

The overseas market alone can bring Guangying Kuaibo more than 20 million monthly active users and 8 million daily active users, and the payment rate is very high.

Because Guangying Kuaibo has always adopted a paid model overseas, the average monthly membership price is around US$5.

After all, countries like Japan, South Korea, and Singapore are relatively developed, have a strong awareness of genuine products, and are willing to pay for cultural products.

Although the number of users is not large, the revenue brought by payment is very high. At least it allows Guangying Kuaibo to operate in various countries without spending any money and even make a small profit.

Of course, it’s still too early to make a big profit.

Back to the point. Just as domestic video platforms began to shift to long-term competition, their self-produced dramas began to compete with each other for actors, directors, and scripts.

Actors who originally had to rely on film and television companies have naturally become popular in this situation of competition among multiple companies. Their pay has been rising continuously, and their lives are getting better and better.

The era of actor pay bubble has begun!

In just two years, the pay of first-tier actors has increased fivefold, and the pay of second- and third-tier actors has doubled or tripled!
Faced with the sudden surge in actors' pay, a large number of film and television production companies are cash-strapped and cannot afford to hire actors to film.

On the contrary, a group of emerging film and television companies that have received large amounts of investment from new capital, such as New Classics and Hairun, are waving their money and raising prices along with the three major film and television platforms.

Under this "bubble economy" situation, the era of light and shadow naturally hesitated.

A TV series that originally cost 2000 million yuan to shoot now costs more than million yuan. The gap is not small!
Although the purchasing power of TV stations is still very strong and advertising fees have skyrocketed in recent years, thanks to the popularity of "The Legend of Zhen Huan", domestic TV stations are also a blue ocean.

However, the soaring cost of TV drama production represents an increase in capital investment for Guangying Times. No matter how people look at it, they feel that the money is wasted and the cost-effectiveness is not high.

For actors like Yang Mi, Jin Sha, Tang Yan, Luo Jin and other first-line actors of the company, instead of spending so much money to let them shoot the company's own dramas, it would be better to let them go and take on dramas from other companies and the three major video platforms.

It's so cool to get some free stuff from outside, and the company can get a commission without doing anything.

As for its own dramas, Guangying Times doesn’t have much else but a lot of actors, and it has the ability to create its own stars!
If Tangren can produce two or three top actresses in generations, there is no reason why Guangying Times cannot do it. Back then, Jinsha was also promoted by the company from a pure newcomer!

In this era when actors' pay has skyrocketed to frightening levels, Light and Shadow Era is really not suitable to be the one being taken advantage of.

After discussing it together, the company's executives made the above decision and began to promote new actors.

The first ones to be promoted are Reba and a male actor named Li Xian.

The two of them will partner up to star in the company's new TV series "Love O2O"!
If this movie performs well, they will continue to work on another idol drama and bring in a few newcomers from the company.

There's no other way. The director of the company's artist management department is Liu Jia, an old Jiaxing employee. He's absolutely self-taught when it comes to packaging actors and bringing in new ones.

After Wu Yuan learned about these situations, he also felt emotional in his heart.

"We have finally entered the era of the film pay bubble."

"However, compared to Japan's economic bubble, the domestic actor pay bubble is not so easy to burst, and it will not collapse too much after it is burst."

"After all, the domestic film and television market is large enough. Even if it develops a little abnormally, it can still be sustained."

There is no doubt that in Wu Yuan's eyes, the high pay for domestic TV dramas is definitely an abnormal development, especially the situation later when the two leading actors could take away 100 million or 200 million in pay.

This has nothing to do with whether the market is developed or not. American TV dramas and the popular Korean dramas in Asia do not have such high pay. This is totally unreasonable!
The high pay of domestic TV actors is just the result of the abnormal development of an overheated market. (End of this chapter)