Compared with the original, almost all the protagonists in the play have changed endings
The ending of “The World” Liang Xiaosheng likes and adapts
The hit drama “The World” ended on March 1. Since the show’s launch, it has set a new high in the average ratings of CCTV’s TV series in the past five years. The popularity of the iQiyi platform has exceeded 9,800, and the Douban score is 8.1.
Liang Xiaosheng’s novel “The World” was first published in December 2017. The novel takes the life trajectory of the commoner Zhou Bingkun as a clue, and shows the development and changes of Chinese society in the past 50 years. Throughout it, there are not only the “glory and dream” of Chinese social development, but also the difficulties and complexities of the reform and opening up process, creating a novel. The group portraits of laborers, builders, reformers, entrepreneurs, etc., from their ups and downs in life full of joys and sorrows, epicly show the magnificent social changes in China.
Shortly after the novel was published, Tencent Pictures and director Li Lu jointly chose to shoot. In November 2018, Tencent Pictures obtained the film and television adaptation rights of the work for 8 years from Yiwei Culture, who at that time helped Liang Xiaosheng to represent the copyright of “The World“. In August of the following year, “The World” won the highest award of Chinese literature – the 10th Mao Dun Literature Award with the highest votes.
Compared with the original, the endings of almost all the protagonists in the drama version have changed. Take the three brothers and sisters of the Zhou family as an example: in the original book, Zhou Bingyi contracted stomach cancer because of his work and died soon after. After Zhou Bingyi’s death, Hao Dongmei met a Chinese businessman and immediately chose to remarry and live abroad for the rest of his life. In the TV series, the plot of Zhou Bingyi’s stomach cancer was not directly deleted, but it was changed to the early stage of stomach cancer where the disease did not deteriorate. After the transformation of the “Light Character Sheet” was completed, Zhou Bingyi and Hao Dongmei returned to their former life in the Corps. As for Zhou Bingkun and Zheng Juan, in the original book, Zhou Bingkun was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison, but in the play, the sentence was reduced, and he was sentenced to 9 years, plus several commutations, and finally he was released from prison for about 8 years. In addition, the endings of Zhou Rong and Cai Xiaoguang have also changed.
Regarding these changes, screenwriter Wang Hailing revealed in an interview with a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily that Liang Xiaosheng has never interfered with the adaptation, and the only request for adaptation he made was declined, and he didn’t say anything.
At the “From Literature to Film and Television – “The World” Symposium held by the Chinese Writers Association recently, Liang Xiaosheng said frankly: “The film and television drama has carried out a good refinement of the thoughts I want to express. The TV series of “The World” will be partially The characters and plots have changed from conceptualization to figuration, and the drama is more intelligently displayed. For example, for the portrayal of the role of Zhou’s mother, the plot of Zhou’s father’s approval of Zheng Juan was changed to let Zheng Juan hear the heart-to-heart dialogue between the father and son at the door. Wait, these changes prove that the director and the adaptor have improved the original work. If the novel can be rewritten, I want to incorporate the wisdom of the main creators.”
Text / reporter Yang Wenjie
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A mutual fulfillment of literature and film and television
“The long novel “The World” is a veritable big ‘IP’. When its classicity is gradually recognized and confirmed by people, the space for its interpretation will inevitably continue to expand, which means that this ‘IP’ is developed. There will be more space.”
——Critic Pan Kaixiong
“This work of ‘a tribute to literature and a tribute to life’ is not only a rich and warm life history of the common people, but also a magnificent history of reform and development, providing a solid literary foundation for the production of TV dramas.”
——Producer of “The World“, Vice President of Tencent GroupCheng Wu, CEO of China Literature Group
“The first is that (the novel) has a group of stand-up portraits, and secondly, it also contains nearly 50 years of historical living beings, with enough depth of the times, and finally, there are vivid stories and the smell of fireworks in the world.”
——Li Lu, director and chief producer of “The World“
“Literature and film and television are a relationship that distinguishes, inspires, inspires, complements each other, and ultimately strengthens and magnifies each other.”
——Tie Ning, Chairman of China Writers Association and Chairman of China Federation of Literary and Art Circles
(The above speech is excerpted from “From Literature to Film and Television – Symposium on “The World“)