On the tenth anniversary of the broadcast of “The Legend of Zhen Huan”, Xiaoxi frequently received discussions on “The Legend of Zhen Huan” pushed to her on various online platforms. Expression packs, golden sentences, jokes, detailed archaeology… The stalking of “The Legend of Zhen Huan” has even evolved into a social business card called “Zhen Xue”, which makes people who have watched the show smile.
Influenced by the hot discussion atmosphere of “Zhen Xue”, Xiaoxi, who graduated with a major in film and television, is also eager to try it. In a fun mood, she recorded the first episode of the show “The Legend of Zhen Huan”, which she did not expect to become an instant hit. In the current sluggish environment of the film and television industry, Xiaoxi made money by interpreting “The Legend of Zhen Huan” unintentionally.
It’s not just Erchuang that makes money. “The Legend of Zhen Huan has been on the air for 11 years, and it is still bringing income to Huaer Film and Television (one of the production companies of “The Legend of Zhen Huan”). Said that the show “can bring more than 10 million yuan in revenue to Huaer Film and Television every year”.
In 2013, Huaer Film and Television was acquired by LeTV in its heyday for 900 million yuan. Today, LeTV Group is different, but “The Legend of Zhen Huan” is still the core IP that can be paid to watch on LeTV Video.
11 years have passed, and the annual broadcast revenue of “The Legend of Zhen Huan” is still tens of millions
“On April 1, 2022, I watched it for the first time”, “In the early morning of March 27, 2022, I became a member in order to watch “The Legend of Zhen Huan”, “April 14, 2022. I don’t know how many times.” … Today, there are still many new bullet screens added to the video screen of “The Legend of Zhen Huan”.
Image source: Screenshot of Youku video from “The Legend of Zhen Huan”
Image source: Screenshot of LeTV video from “The Legend of Zhen Huan”
The director of “The Legend of Zhen Huan”, Zheng Xiaolong, should not have thought that eleven years have passed, and the audience is still “passing through love”.
“It’s not too late for the queen to take revenge in ten years!” Last year, the short video of Cai Shaofen, the star of “The Legend of Zhen Huan”, “playing the emperor’s forehead” in front of the computer has reached 17.01 million views on her personal Weibo.
Not long ago, the “Journey Zhen” had a debate competition about whether there was a scene in which Cut Autumn opened the food box and poisoned it. From the “Zhen Huan Biography” Douban group, everyone quarreled with Weibo and Xiaohongshu, and even disturbed the actor who played Jianqiu to find out the script of the year to prove whether there was that scene.
This full-length series has been repeatedly scrutinized by generations of audiences. While it has been repeatedly searched for, it has also benefited the copyright owner, the main creative team, and the broadcasting platform for a long time.
In 2006, the first TV series “Happiness Like Flowers” invested by Huaer Film and Television was released, which not only made Deng Chao and Sun Li become attached to the drama, but also made Huaer Film and Television become famous. In 2018, Dun Yong analyzed the “Iron Triangle” team of Huaer Film and Television when he was interviewed by reporters. Dun Yong (real name Cao Yong) managed the company’s operations, director Zheng Xiaolong checked the artistic creation, Cao Ping was responsible for the production and publicity, “Zhen Huan”. Biography is undoubtedly the highlight of Huaer Film and Television.
“The Legend of Zhen Huan” was first broadcast on local stations at the end of 2011. After that, LeTV Video obtained the exclusive broadcast rights on the Internet. Once it was broadcast, it became a phenomenon-level drama. Sun Li won many awards for this drama and successfully entered the super first-tier echelon.
In December 2013, Huaer Film and Television was wholly-owned by the listed company LeTV. Through multiple rounds of broadcasts, it continued to bring revenue to LeTV.
Dun Yong told every reporter, “The copyright contract between “The Legend of Zhen Huan” and the broadcasting platform started in 2011 and expired in 2017, and signed a ten-year contract with the broadcasting platform from 2018 to 2027. There are earnings on TV and other platforms.”
There are also American and English subtitled versions of “The Legend of Zhen Huan” on the LeTV video. Image source: APP screenshot
Every time the reporter learned that the exclusive broadcast of “The Legend of Zhen Huan” was once one of the ace resources of LeTV Video. Later, with the company’s operational difficulties, the copyright of “The Legend of Zhen Huan” was distributed to Youku Video. At present, the genuine full-length video of “The Legend of Zhen Huan” can be viewed on LeTV and Youku. After watching a few episodes for free, viewers still need to activate a paid membership to watch the entire episode. For long video sites, membership payment is the most direct source of income. As for how many members and how much revenue did “The Legend of Zhen Huan” bring to Youku? Youku said it was inconvenient to disclose.
Netizens jokingly said: “A “Zhen Huan Biography” can be regarded as keeping Youku’s glory and wealth.”
“Zhen Xue” feeds creators
In the past 11 years, “The Legend of Zhen Huan” has not only steadily entered the TOP list of TV dramas every year, but its plot and lines have become a “rich mine” for netizens to play stalks again and again.
Some netizens said: “The Legend of Zhen Huan has already been ‘panned’ by me, but I can ‘pan’ it for another ten years!”
Image source: Screenshot of Yunhe Data
Yunhe data shows that entries related to “The Legend of Zhen Huan” still frequently appeared on the hot search list of short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou in April. On Youku, the popularity of “The Legend of Zhen Huan” has remained around 8,000 for nearly a month.
Image source: Screenshot of Lighthouse Pro
Other TV series are watched at double speed, while “The Legend of Zhen Huan” is watched by netizens with a magnifying glass.
Famous scenes, classic lines, scene interpretations, emojis, stalks, archaeology, divine commentary, Zhen Huan style… The “Zhen Xue” derived from the play has made netizens endlessly discussing on social platforms, and the hot search on Weibo is even more It’s a common meal, and it also feeds a lot of “by-products” by the way.
“Interpreting “The Legend of Zhen Huan” is very fun. It’s a bit like exploring new knowledge. If you don’t see the point in the episode, but you see it in the video and discussion, you will (get) to satisfy your curiosity and explore new things. Happy.” Xiaoxi said in an interview with the reporter’s voice call in April. “The Legend of Zhen Huan is like a treasure map of inference. Many hidden lines are buried in it, let us dig to find it.”
When doing the interpretation of the first issue, Konishi did not expect this to become a special form. “I just think that voiceover interpretation is a common technique in film and television creation. If a character is played very well, their lines will often cover up the character’s true thoughts, and the screenwriter will tell the story behind the actor’s lines from the ‘God’s perspective’. , in this way,[it]forms a funny style.”
In the “Zhen Xue” universe, the first thing to break the circle is the widely used expression packs and golden sentences in the play. However, with the “opening of brain holes” of netizens, more content has been generated on social platforms, making “The Legend of Zhen Huan” more and more frequent.
Image source: Weibo screenshot
There is a sophisticated school of “frame-by-frame research”. They usually take the fun of discovering the scenes of dressing up in the play, and they are very concerned about the set and costumes of the crew. For example, they found that the same clothes were arranged and combined on several concubines. You can see details such as reflectors in your eyes.
There is the “Deep Interpretation School”, who believe in “talking only one-third of the words to everyone”, they have shown twelve points of spirit and imagination to study and interpret the various voice-overs of the harem ladies.
Image source: Screenshot of video on social platform
In addition, there are research and analysis from various perspectives of psychology, workplace relationships, and power in intimate relationships.
There are even netizens who have developed test papers for the classic lines of “The Legend of Zhen Huan”, which are also divided into volume one, volume two, and volume three.
Image source: Screenshot of video on social platform
Under the ecology of “Zhenxue”, netizens are happy to interact and create stalks, which also makes “The Legend of Zhen Huan” show a huge long-tail effect. Not only “The Legend of Zhen Huan”, “Kangxi Dynasty”, “Wulin Biography”, “Langya Bang” and other long-lasting long-term film and television dramas, all of which are favored by long-term video sites because of their lasting vitality.
Regarding the business experience of buying classic old dramas and bringing new benefits, Youku told the reporters: “In the past five years, Youku has restored more than 5,000 classic literary and artistic works, creating the most complete high-definition classic film library on the entire network. The technology of de-noising, de-interlacing, de-color cast, de-blur, de-scratch, de-flicker, de-jitter, high frame rate and other optimization and adjustment of old films greatly improves the user’s visual experience. A large number of national dramas and movies such as Journey to the West, My Fair Princess and Soldier Assault have changed from old to new, attracting a large number of young people.”
(At the request of the interviewee, the article “Xiaoxi” is a pseudonym)
