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Text | Mouyu

After the "comic adaptation fever" swept the drama market, the film market also began to gear up.

The martial arts comic adaptation drama "Young Man on White Horse Drunk in Spring Breeze", which is responsible for Youku's summer KPI, was premiered on July 19. As the plot gradually got better, word of mouth gradually fermented. The further expansion of Youku's "Shao Ge Universe" has enabled the comic adaptation drama craze to continue.

After the drama market invested in comic adaptations, the film market also followed suit. Whether it is "Under the Aliens" which has been scheduled for July 26, or "The Dart" which will start shooting on the same day, it shows that live-action comic adaptations have begun to sweep the film industry.

With the continued increase in the drama and film markets, the comic adaptation track has ushered in an all-round upgrade both at the production and market levels. In 2024, the "comic adaptation fever" in the film and television industry has been pushed to a new peak.

However, amid the surge in live-action comic adaptations, poor market performance and a lack of blockbuster hits have become a prominent feature of this track, pouring cold water on the hot comic adaptation track.

A new wave of comic book adaptations is coming

Live-action comic adaptation is indeed one of the hottest tracks in the film and television industry in 2024. This popularity is not only reflected in the fact that it has received more attention at the market level, but also in the fact that the content production level is moving towards the mainstream and is favored by more leading film and television companies.

According to data from Gudao Network Film and Television, a total of five comic-adapted dramas were broadcast in the first half of this year. This may not be a lot compared to the number of dramas in other categories, but it is a significant increase compared to the three dramas in the same period last year.

In addition to the increase in quantity,Another obvious change in comic adaptations is that they are getting closer to the top dramas.In addition to Bilibili's "Time Agent" and Tencent's "My Name is Bai Xiaofei", iQiyi has broadcast three comic-adapted dramas, "Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Moon Red Chapter", "Flame" and "The Journey of the Dali Temple Shaoqing". All of them are configured with "top film and television companies + top actors + top IPs". The advantages in content production have also driven the comic-adapted dramas to receive more market attention.

Entering the second half of 2024, the film and television industry ushered in a new round of comic adaptations.

On the one hand, more comic-adapted dramas are emerging.According to Guduo statistics, there are 16 comic adaptation projects currently in preparation and production, which is a significant increase.The leading long-form video platforms have also begun to differentiate their content in the production of comic-adapted dramas.。

Youku has 6 comic adaptation projects in preparation, mainly adaptations of classic Chinese comic IPs such as "Tower of God", "The Darling", and "City of the Dead", and mostly focus on passionate male themes; iQiyi is the leading platform with the most comic adaptation projects, with a total of 7 comic adaptations, and the original adaptations are half and half from Japanese and Chinese comics, and the themes are mainly romantic female themes.

Compared with iQiyi and Youku, which are continuously making efforts in comic adaptation, Tencent, although it has the IP resource library of Tencent Comics, is obviously more cautious in the production of comic adaptations. Currently, it has only developed "Nana" and "Super War". Bilibili, which also has a large number of animation IPs, has only one "Feng Ling Yu Xiu" in its film and television list. Live-action film and television production itself is not Bilibili's advantage, so it is normal for it to be more cautious in the development of live-action comic adaptations.

On the other hand, comic adaptations have moved from the TV series market to the film market., live-action comic adaptations began to hit the big screen.

Wuershan, the director who became a god last year with "The Legend of the Gods Part I", is back with his new work in this summer season. The live-action comic adaptation "Under the Alien" has already started previews and has received decent reviews so far. The film version of "The Bodyguard" is directed by Yuan Heping and stars Wu Jing, and it can be said to be one of the most popular film projects in the market in recent years.

The biggest difference between movies and TV series is that the former relies on real money, and the market's preferences can be clearly reflected in the box office results. The emergence of live-action comic-adapted movie projects also represents the film market's optimism about the development trend and space of the comic-adapted track.

Whether it is the small screen or the big screen, there will be more and more live-action comic adaptations emerging in the future. However, contrary to the favor of the film and television industry, the market feedback for comic adaptations is often unsatisfactory. The flourishing comic adaptation track actually hides deep anxiety and hidden worries.

The comic book adaptation track waiting for a hit

An unavoidable fact is thatThe entire comic adaptation track has not yet produced a phenomenal hit。

The best performance of a domestic comic-adapted drama dates back to 2019, with "Once Upon a Time There Was a Spirit Sword Mountain" starring Xu Kai and Zhang Rongrong. It scored 7 points on Douban and exceeded 100 million yuan per episode, which was already quite impressive in the comic-adapted track. However, a series of controversies such as added scenes and bad endings caused its reputation and popularity to decline in the later period.

After "Once Upon a Time There Was a Spirit Sword Mountain", the number of comic-adapted dramas that can be considered popular can be counted on one hand. The well-received "Hikaru no Go", "Song of Youth" and "Under the Strange Man" all have Douban scores above 8 points, and the average number of views per episode hovers around 20 million. The audience is still concentrated in specific circles, but because they are low-cost dramas, this result is not bad.

By 2024, the advent of the comic book adaptation trend and the surge in headline projects did not lead to an improvement in broadcast performance.The five comic adaptations aired in H1 can be described as "annihilated", the broadcast performance of the top works was far below expectations.

The total number of views of the three comic adaptations of iQIYI, including "Journey to the Dali Temple", "Flame", and "Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Moon Red", all failed to exceed 20 million. Judging from the cast, production costs, marketing and other configurations of the top works and the broadcast results, there is no objection to the failure. As for "Time Agent" and "My Name is Bai Xiaofei", no one cares.

The comic adaptation track is facing an embarrassing situation. As the comic adaptation fever sweeps the film and television industry, the content quality of comic adaptations has not been improved accordingly. This is mainly because film and television companies have fallen into a misunderstanding in the content production of live-action comic adaptations.

In fact,The long-standing dilemma faced by the live-action comic adaptation track is that it is difficult to break out of the circleEven comic-adapted dramas with recognized good reputations such as "Hikaru no Go", "Song of Youth" and "Under the Alien" have still failed to spark widespread discussion. There is always a barrier between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds, and comic-adapted dramas are relatively niche.

How to solve the problem of breaking out of the circle has become the key to whether comic-adapted dramas can have greater development space. Film and television producers try to break out of the circle with more well-known IPs, stronger casts, and richer special effects technology, and continue to increase production, but ignore the script, which has the greatest impact on the quality of the content of comic-adapted dramas, and instead affects the presentation of the entire drama.

The key to live-action comic adaptations is actually,How to present the highly imaginative and creative content in the two-dimensional world in a way that is closer to three-dimensional reality?, breaking the barriers between dimensions and attracting a wider range of users can successfully break out of the circle. However, it is obvious that most of the top comic adaptations broadcast in the first half of this year focused on strong visual effects and did not really achieve an upgrade in terms of content.

If previous comic-adapted dramas were just not popular enough and had difficulty breaking out of the circle, they could still maintain their reputation. But now they can no longer maintain their reputation or popularity, and are getting further and further away from becoming a hit.

Comic adaptations still need to be "slowly modified"

Objectively speaking, the current difficulties faced by live-action comic adaptations cannot be attributed to individual film and television producers, but rather to the problems that emerged from the impetuousness of the entire industry.When everyone wants to get the bonus, it is not so easy to get the bonus.。

Live-action comic adaptations undoubtedly have great development prospects. They are not only an important link in opening up the entire IP industry chain, but also an important driving force for gathering young consumers in the second dimension. iQiyi’s Chief Content Officer stated when launching the animation IP incubation plan “Sky Plan”:Animation is the future, it is naturally full of imagination, and its enduring youthfulness, vitality and commercial realization are the strongest. We need to see the young user group and serve the young people.

More importantly, compared with other types of film and television, live-action comic adaptations are still in their early stages of development, with less competition and more room for development. This means that film and television producers can reap the most benefits, driving the advent of a comic adaptation boom.

In order to reap the most dividends first, film and television companies are eager to launch the first hit, which has also led to the phenomenon of "trying all kinds of methods in a hurry". When the urgency of creating a hit is higher than creating a good work, it is natural to make mistakes in production and try to achieve a hit through shortcuts such as IP and cast. Several comic adaptations broadcast in the first half of this year are typical examples. S+'s comic adaptation project did not get S+'s return. iQiyi also produced the "Fox Spirit Matchmaker Trilogy" all at once, which made people sweat.

To solve the current dilemma of comic adaptations being unable to create popular hits, we must first cool down the film and television producers. It is obviously not feasible to rush into the comic adaptation track and pile up various popular elements to create a popular comic adaptation.

In fact, even if live-action comic adaptations are superimposed with animation elements, they are ultimately film and television works, and the production still needs to start with the quality of the content, but there is an additional step of restoring the two-dimensional world and spiritual core, which is also the most difficult part to present, and requires more thinking in content production.

Deliberately pursuing a hit will only get you further away from it, and the comic adaptation track also needs to "slow down".