Profiting from online content
With the growing number of internet users, digital content producers are looking for new ways to transform hit online novels into enduring franchises.
Wu Song, a fantasy epic — which made the writer Liu Wei, better known by his pseudonym Xue Hong, the first online writer to earn more than 1 million yuan ($147,000) annually — exemplifies this trend.
Wu Song which roughly translates as “Ode to Wu”, refers to a clan of giants who possess supernatural powers and deem peacekeeping as their inherited duty in China’s first dynasty Xia, which ruled the country for around four centuries nearly 4,000 years ago.
The story is about a secret agent, who through a series of twists and turns becomes the most influential warrior in the Xia empire.
Meanwhile, the ChineseAll Digital Publishing Group, one of the country’s largest online content publishers, recently said it had teamed up with Wanda Pictures, the film arm of the Dalian Wanda Group, to turn the novel into a movie franchise comprising three feature-length movies and six series within a decade. The franchise will also be included in Wanda’s plans to build a Chinese version of Disneyland.
Separately, Wanda launched its Qingdao Movie Metropolis earlier this year, a 50-billion yuan project which comprises an indoor theme park with entertainment facilities inspired by blockbuster film franchises.
For instance, the park has a roller coaster inspired by Nezha, a threeheaded, six-armed deity from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) novel Feng Shen Yan Yi (Creation of the Gods), which will be made into a