Youku’s “New Hong Kong Drama” layout has achieved results “Integrity Sniper” won the highest reputation of 2022 Hong Kong drama
Towards the end of the year, Hong Kong dramas once again brought surprises. The popular Youku drama “Integrity Sniper”, with its adrenaline-fueled action scenes, twists and turns, and tight rhythm, scored 8.0 points on Douban, becoming the highest-rated Hong Kong drama this year. In addition to “Forensic Pioneer V”, which just ended, and “Family Glory” at the beginning of the year, Youku’s “Xingang drama” that has been deployed for two years is ushering in a period of concentrated harvest.
“Integrity Sniper” is jointly produced by Youku and Shaw Brothers International Films, produced by Le Yiling, directed by Huang Guoqiang and Zeng Minshan, written by Guan Haoyue, starring Huang Zongze, Wu Zhuoxi, Wang Haoxin, Tan Junyan, Wu Dingxin and others. It tells the story of three childhood sweethearts who changed each other’s fate due to an accident in a residential building collapse. They reunited after 20 years. The three have their own identities. Luo Zifeng (played by Huang Zongze) is the chief investigator of the ICAC. Zhuo Yifan (played by Wu Zhuoxi) became a criminal lawyer, and Wei Jiming became a senior inspector. After regaining their old friendship, they found that the accident of the year was a huge lie woven by power and money, and decided to join hands to uncover the truth.
In terms of content, the play retains the essence of Hong Kong dramas to the greatest extent, such as adrenaline-fueled explosions, gunfight scenes, black and white protagonists, and high-energy plots with constant reversals. At the same time, detailed upgrades have been made in tone, camera, and rhythm to adapt to the habit of mainland audiences in watching dramas.
Xie Ying, general manager of Youku Drama Center, once said that with the economic and cultural development of the mainland, users’ viewing habits are also undergoing iterations, and it is easier to gain the common understanding of mainland users only by exploring the cultural same roots and homology between Hong Kong dramas and mainland audiences. It is against this background that “Xingang Drama” came into being. Xie Ying believes that the innovation of “New Hong Kong Drama” is reflected in the new model, new vision, and new users: the new model refers to the integration of mainland and Hong Kong teams, and the new vision refers to the addition of international story cores on the basis of classic Hong Kong dramas. It refers to breaking the limitation of Hong Kong drama “teacher watching drama” and attracting users of a wider age group.
Youku has the largest library of Hong Kong dramas on the Internet. In 2013, Youku and TVB reached a strategic cooperation and exclusively obtained all the copyrights of TVB. In 2018, Youku, TVB and TVBC jointly launched the “Global Synchronized Drama Series”, realizing the simultaneous broadcast of Hong Kong dramas in mainland China and Hong Kong for the first time. In the same year, “Hong Kong Theater” was branded, and an offline event for users-Hong Kong Opera Carnival was held. In 2020, Youku will cooperate with TVB, Media Asia and other film producers to produce a number of customized Hong Kong dramas, starting a new exploration of Hong Kong dramas. This year, the cooperation between Youku and Hong Kong film studios has expanded to the theme of ancient costumes.
Next, Youku Hong Kong Theater will continue to broadcast a number of dramas such as “Drug Fighter”, “Super Messenger”, “The Invisible Team”, “The Hidden Gate”, “Tsundere and Zhang Jing”, “Overlapping Sniper” and so on.