From the broadcasting of large quantities Chinese dramas around the world, to the strategy of overseas expansion of Chinese video websites and TV organizations to accelerate the pace of Chinese drama exports, the globalization model of Chinese dramas is achieving continuous progression.
Recently, “New Life Begins” was launched on streaming platforms in North America, Europe, Australia, Indian Peninsula, Singapore, Malaysia and many other regions; before that, the web series “Immortal Samsara” was distributed to South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and other regions for broadcast; in addition, “Thank You, Doctor ” was also launched on many overseas platforms including North America, Russia, South Korea and Japan during its broadcast.
01 Diversification Subject
As an important breakthrough for Chinese dramas to go global, ancient costume dramas have always been the main force for culture export, such as “Legend of Concubine Zhen Huan”, “Nirvana in Fire”, “Eternal Love of Dream”, “Story of Yanxi Palace”, “The Untamed”, “Joy of Life” and other costume dramas have driven a new round of fever to go global. Since 2022, the momentum of ancient costume dramas globally is still strong.
In 2022, Korean platform bought the rights of “Love Between Fairy and Devil” and “A Dream of Splendor”; “New Life Begins” was launched on streaming platforms in North America, Europe, Australia, India, Singapore, Malaysia, and other regions; “Who Rules the World” landed on Netflix and will be launched in more than 190 countries and regions worldwide one after another.
In fact, along with Chinese dramas high-quality development, such as industry drama “I Will Find You a Better Home”, “The Stage “, suspense drama “Day and Night”, “Burning Ice”, emotional drama “Nothing But Thirty”, “My Best Friend's Story”, and political drama “Like a Flowing River”, “Minning Town” have joined the ranks of domestic dramas going abroad, a trend that has been particularly evident since this year.
In fact, along with Chinese dramas high quality development, such as industry drama “I Will Find You a Better Home”, “The Stage “, suspense drama “Day and Night”, “Burning Ice”, emotional drama “Nothing But Thirty”, “My Best Friend's Story”, and political drama “Like a Flowing River”, “Minning Town” have joined the ranks of domestic dramas going abroad, a trend that has been particularly evident since this year. For example, “A Lifelong Journey” was pre-ordered by Disney for exclusive overseas distribution during the filming stage; “Reset” was broadcast on Netflix.
In 2022, the explosion of micro-short dramas is evident to all, and this new drama industry has also won the recognition of more audience. Short dramas such as “Maid's Revenge”, “The Killer Is Also Romantic”, “Destined to Meet You” and “Night of Love With You” has also won the recognition of over world audience.
With the development of micro-short drama towards genre and segmentation, forming a more stable user circle, going abroad has also broadened the new profit space for short dramas. Since 2022 popular short dramas have accelerated the pace of developing positions overseas, Mango TV having 90 short dramas online on overseas platforms.
02 Multi-party cooperation
The continuous advancement of Chinese dramas abroad cannot be achieved without the joint efforts of video platforms and film and television organizations. In recent years, through the cooperation with mainstream TV media in many countries, the localized translation and dubbing of excellent Chinese audiovisual programs are regularly broadcast in their fixed time slots. In addition, Chinese dramas can not be separated from the video platform to promote the video industry into the era of stock competition, going abroad is becoming a new path for video platforms to find incremental volume, the development of overseas business has also become a new choice for many video platforms.
The major long-form video platforms have also taken advantage of copyright to go abroad and built overseas platforms, along with domestic streaming platforms have established international versions, Tencent Video, IQIYI, Youku, Mango TV and other platforms are gradually gaining recognition from overseas users. According to incomplete statistics, a total of nearly 1,600 dramas have been launched on the four platforms.
With the increase in popularity of domestic dramas overseas, most Chinese dramas have achieved simultaneous domestic and overseas broadcasting, and going abroad has gradually become the standard for major dramas, and presents the characteristics of normalization of output and diversification of subject matter.
For example, “Lighter & Princess” starring Chen Feiyu and Zhang Jingyi was followed by Astro double-star channel in Malaysia; “Thank You, Doctor” was broadcast on more than 10 video platforms such as Astro, Starhub, True ID, Viu and iTalkon.
03 New Challenges
While ushering in opportunities, Chinese dramas going abroad have also encountered unpredictable challenges. At present, Southeast Asia is the core market for Chinese TV dramas. How to break through the cultural barriers and achieve localization in the European and American cultural circles will be the biggest challenge and growth space for TV dramas in the process of going abroad.
As a matter of fact, film and TV dramas going abroad are accompanied by a variety of attributes such as culture and living habits, and film and TV works going abroad need to put in efforts in localization investment and communication channel construction. Although the attractiveness of film and TV works is the basis of effective communication, how to take into account the oriental characteristics, the internationalization of audiovisual language and aesthetics, cross-cultural topics, and the building of cross-linguistic bridges, all of which require overcoming many difficulties such as market, translation, and cultural differences, and thus promoting more works reflecting the development and progress of contemporary China to the world.
Whether it is the policy background, market demand, or the strategy of video platforms and film companies themselves, going abroad is becoming a new blue ocean of content and value for film and TV dramas, and major platforms and film institutions should also seize the opportunity to create more outstanding works.