Chapter 198: Fortunes from Heaven, Explosive Heat
At the end of July, the highly anticipated "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" was finally launched.
As a breakthrough hope for Qiyi TV in the field of self-made dramas, the resources of this drama are also unprecedentedly strong.
The three major traffic stars are one of them. The director invited Zheng Baorui, who directed "Ancient House Panic", "Dog Bite Dog" and "Journey to the West: Havoc in Heaven".
The production cost of the whole drama is as high as 60 million, with a total of twelve episodes, equivalent to 5 million per episode.
Even for TV dramas, few exceed this budget standard.
And the results after the broadcast did not disappoint the producers.
At 8 o'clock on Friday night, the first episode of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" was launched. In less than half an hour, the front-end playback volume showed that it had exceeded 10 million.
At the same time, the entire Qiyi TV website showed obvious freezes, obviously because the user traffic has exceeded the website load limit.
The "UHD" and "HD" modes basically buffered, and many viewers had to switch to 480P to watch smoothly.
With just this episode, the number of views of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" exceeded "100 million" within 22 hours of its release, breaking the record set by "Forensic Qin Ming" not long ago. It is terrifying.
However, along with the extremely high viewing data, there is an overwhelming amount of criticism.
Especially the original fans "Daomi", who are about to destroy the comment area.
"God damn 'hand over the cultural relics to the country'! 'Grave Robbers' Chronicles' has directly become 'Treasure Protection Notes'."
"Actors' acting skills, 0 points; plot quality, 0 points; shooting level, 0 points; 'hand over to the country' made me laugh, 1 point - total score, 1 point."
"This drama must be made by a crazy fan of "Ghost Blows Out the Light". They deliberately made "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" ugly so that all viewers will turn to watch "Ghost Blows Out the Light"."
"..."
Whether it is the comment area of Qiyi TV, Weibo, Douban, Bilibili or Tieba, the entire network is almost one-sidedly negative.
The number of views of this drama exceeded 100 million in just 22 hours. What's even more amazing is that its rating dropped from 7 points to 3.5 points in just three hours, and it is still declining.
"Grave Robbers' Chronicles" adopts a weekly update mode, with one episode updated per week, and one episode was scolded for a week.
The only ones who are still supporting it are some fans of the leading actors, who have said that the first episode had to be shot like this in order to pass the review. It will be fine after it is put into the ground.
In fact, it is not completely unreasonable to say this. After all, everyone knows the sensitivity of the theme of "tomb robbing". Stacking armor at the beginning of the first episode is also a means of passing the review.
So, many viewers calmed down temporarily and began to wait for the subsequent plot.
Soon, two weeks later, the plot finally came to the first unit story of the original work, "The Seven Star Palace of King Lu".
Then, it ushered in even greater ridicule.
"I want to ask which clothing factory the props team found, this 'corpse bug' looks like a stuffed toy."
"Is this the 'super web drama' that claims to have an investment of 5 million per episode? The corpse cave is not as exquisite as my son's Lego toys."
"..."
Almost all the audience's complaints were directed at the "five-cent special effects" in the drama. After all, it is hard to believe that with an investment of 60 million in 2015, something of the level of a college student's graduation project could be produced.
Usually at this time, as a crew, the best way is to choose to play dead.
But not in "Grave Robbers' Chronicles". The crew and producer stood up and said that it was not that we didn't spend money, but that the level of domestic props and special effects could only reach this level, and we had money but nowhere to spend it.
If it was before, there might be nothing wrong with saying this, after all, the special effects of domestic dramas have always been the hardest hit area for complaints.
But the problem is that at this moment, there is a drama next door that has been criticized for "props that are too real."
"Is the domestic level only this high? Please take a look at the next door, the level of sophistication of the props there is."
"The big guy above, what drama is next door?" "
Leshi.com's "Forensic Qin Ming", the main theme is 'immersive'."
"A forensic drama? Will it be scary?"
"It's okay if it's scary, the main plot is criminal investigation. It's recommended to watch it during or after dinner, the effect is better!"
"+1 above, I strongly recommend everyone to watch what the real 'authenticity' is like, it's definitely my latest 'dinner drama'."
"Okay, I just ordered takeout tonight, I'll search and watch it later."
"..."
Actually, although the ratings and word of mouth are terrible, the data of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" is not bad.
The fans of the popular starring actors are indeed powerful. Some ordinary audiences also watch while scolding. In addition to the passers-by attracted by online debates and various Tucao videos, the number of views has been steadily increasing.
In half a month, the total number of views has exceeded 600 million. The number of discussions on Weibo is as high as 10 million, and there are two hot searches per day on average. Yunhe V7 has an average of nearly 10 million views, and the influence ranking of Guduo online dramas has also surpassed "Forensic Qin Ming" with a score of 8,800, ranking first.
Although Arclight Films has always maintained a trend of "opening high and going high" by relying on its first-mover advantage and the optimization and adjustment of subsequent episodes, it is still behind in terms of traffic.
I thought there was no hope, but I didn't expect that the sudden "suicide" of the other producer would bring a wave of traffic to "Forensic Qin Ming".
This is really "wealth from heaven". With the addition of a group of new viewers, the playback data and popularity of "Forensic Qin Ming" have risen again.
One month after its launch, the total playback volume has exceeded 1 billion.
According to this popularity, it is very likely to exceed 2 billion in the end.
2 billion!
Regardless of whether it is water-injected or not, at least Arclight will be the first to shout out this result.
Under the stimulation of this wave of popularity, it took less than two days for "Forensic Qin Ming" to complete the reversal and re-top the list.
Afterwards, the two dramas went up and down, constantly rotating in the first and second positions.
The original "one wave of quick victory" turned into a "long-lasting tug-of-war".
With competition, there will naturally be disputes.
The audiences supporting both sides quarreled on various platforms.
In terms of momentum, the audience of "Forensic Qin Ming" naturally has the upper hand. After all, one has 7.7 points and the other has 3.4 points, which is more than double the gap. There is really nothing to question.
But the fans of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" are also smart. They bypass the shortcomings and cut in from the results, popularity, and hot searches to play a favorable game.
The fans on both sides are having a great time arguing, and the happiest ones are the two websites and producers.
No matter whether it is black or red, the traffic is there anyway.
So Leshi.com and Qiyi TV have arranged people to "provoke" each other from time to time in the relevant discussion areas and community platforms to keep the heat.
Of course, both sides also tacitly control the degree of the debate to avoid attracting the sanctions of "heavenly justice".
Other platforms can only envy the two platforms for their happiness in "swiping" each other. After all, the dramas they are broadcasting are a bit lame and they can't participate.
Fortunately, online dramas are still an incremental market at present, and these popular dramas have attracted many viewers who did not watch online dramas before.
After watching these two dramas, many people went to find other online dramas to watch, so several other platforms also got some benefits.
Now the only focus left is who can get the final "first place".
On one side is reputation, and on the other side is popularity. If there are no other accidents, it is really hard to predict until the end.
But as the saying goes, "there are unexpected events", at the critical point when "Forensic Qin Ming" was halfway through the broadcast, Liu Jun told Meng Bai a bad news.
After receiving the review notice from above, "Forensic Qin Ming" was suspected of "violent and bloody" scenes and needed to be removed from the shelves immediately. It can only be put online again after the rectification is completed.
(End of this chapter)
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