Author | Akagi bottles
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“你有Passion（激情）吗？”
The title of the speech by Wang Xiaohui, chief content officer of iQIYI, at the "Joy Meeting" on September 25, quoted the wonderful speech of the popular contestant Fu Hang in "The King of Comedy", symbolizing iQIYI's "passion and embrace change".
Prior to this, Gong Yu, founder and CEO of iQIYI, analyzed the three major changes that long video is experiencing in 2024: changes in length, changes in AI, and changes in land dramas. The three ways of iQIYI to "embrace change" are: opening micro theaters and short theaters, which are exclusive to VIP members; Launched AI intelligent assistant Taodou 2.0, and vigorously developed overseas business.
It seems that these three solutions correspond to the "long + short" relationship and the reconstruction of business models, AI interactive iteration, and the industry imagination of land dramas going overseas. Facing the upstream of the industry, regarding the changes that creators need to embrace, Wang Xiaohui put forward the view of "positive deconstruction and reverse construction". What creators need to face is "the second era of creative collusion in the film and television industry in the past 50 years", "the mainstream direction of future creation is positive deconstruction, and the biggest innovation lies in the realization of reverse construction." On the one hand, creators should gain insight into public sentiment and topics of the times, and on the other hand, they should establish a new system on the basis of the original creation, and continue to innovate and upgrade. ”
The release of the results of the summer drama series makes the long video seem to have a new arrangement again, and the torrent of the times has swept away round after round of innovative aesthetics and repeatedly washed the film and television entertainment industry, allowing us to predict the direction of the tide in addition to onlookers. In iQIYI, which has always been "self-made", in the sharing of the industry and the content of the film list, we may be able to get a glimpse of where the new round of content exploration of long videos will go.
Launched "short" and "micro" theaters to reconstruct the "long + short" business model
Compared with the spring film list in April this year, the autumn delights on September 25 further emphasized and refined the project positioning and content. The content of the drama includes five genres: "Sea of Life", "Fog Theater", "Legendary Fantasy", "Light of Life" and "Own Power", and there are heavyweight dramas on multiple tracks such as realism, costume fantasy, and suspense.
Next, iQIYI's many theater labels will continue to be updated, and the series will continue to explore around deconstruction and construction, with the distinctive genre of Little Comedy Theater, Love Theater, and Fog Theater undertaking the task of deconstruction, and handing over the task of construction to everyone's theater and micro-dust theater.
To be accepted by the times, it is not necessary to rely on "pleasing the times", but also to stimulate more potential of content quality through "reverse construction". The "reverse construction" of iQIYI's content in this round is continuously explored by the "Dust Theater" and "Everyone Theater" launched in April this year, leading the industry's content to be highly aesthetic and literary. Following "My Altay", the Dust Theater, which focuses on telling the stories of ordinary people, will bring the urban suspense drama "In the World", starring Zhao Liying and Yin Fang, about the self-healing of multiple personalities. Focusing on the adaptation of the works of great writers, the Dajia Theater will present works such as "Going North", "Giving Life to All Things" and "Happy".
The Little Comedy Theater, the Love Theater and the Fog Theater will devote themselves to "positive deconstruction" and analyze the current social relations. The Little Comedy Theater will launch the second season of "Don't Panic King" and "The King of Comedy", and the Love Theater will cover works such as "Seven Nights of Snow", "Big Dream Returns", "Nian Wushuang" and so on. As iQiyi's suspenseful theme, the "master theater", another meaning of the fog is "exploration and innovation without boundaries", the fog theater will next launch "Born by Life" and "Just Defense" and other works, "Born by Life" is directed by Lu Chuan, and "Just Defense" is directed by Li Yunliang, director of the drama version of "The Wind".
Wang Xiaohui pointed out that in the future, iQIYI will still adhere to the "downward empathy, upward creation", the home of creation, the largest and most diverse content will be on the "positive deconstruction", and will also adhere to the "reverse construction", advocating the courage to subvert the routine and innovate the form of content, although it is difficult, it can heal people's hearts, arouse fighting spirit, and give birth to the biggest hits.
In addition, iQIYI will also continue to promote the serial development of drama IP, "Tang Dynasty Legends: Chang'an", "Police Honor 2", "Fearless 2", "Crime Hunting Guide 2", etc. will meet users one after another, continuing the vitality of high-quality content IP.
It is worth mentioning that iQIYI launched a new "short theater" and "micro theater" on the day of the enjoyment meeting, iQIYI's new understanding of short drama + micro theater is also the focus of iQIYI's response to "change" at this enjoyment meeting. iQIYI will promote the integration of long and short videos in creation, "Micro Theater" will launch two new works every week, the content type focuses on male and female frequency and silver-haired groups, mainly 1-5 minutes of vertical screen content; "Short Theater" plans to launch a new work every week, covering ancient sayings, modern couples, suspense and other genres, each episode is 5-20 minutes long, mainly horizontal screen content.
In recent months, whether in the field of micro-short dramas or overseas variety shows, the landing response of silver-haired content has a high mismatch with the supply side of creation, colliding with huge content creation and market potential. As early as the World Congress in April this year, Gong Yu emphasized that he would pay more attention to the two major groups of "one old and one young", and in addition to focusing on the "micro theater" that covers the silver-haired group, variety shows such as "Flowers All the Way" also focus on the silver-haired group. The key projects "Invincible Deer Team" and "Music Princess Amelie" will usher in the fourth season, and new projects such as "Rainbow Guardians" and "Little Kitchen Meow Food Truck" will be launched soon, continuing to build a diversified children's content matrix.
Regarding these two theaters, Gong Yu said in detail, first, iQiyi's short dramas are not equal to short-cut low-cost online dramas, and micro-dramas are not equal to low-quality paid micro-short dramas. The exploration of short dramas and micro-dramas requires continuous attention from the whole industry. Second, the business model of micro-short dramas is changing. The market size of micro-short dramas has shown negative growth this year compared with last year, but more than 90% of the revenue of micro-short dramas is used for streaming and effect advertising, which is a very strange business model.
Third, iQIYI has challenged a new business model, with more than 70% of the revenue distributed to content producers, and members are exclusive. The reason is that the current business model of micro-short dramas is to pay for episodes or multiple episodes, and the price has been declining this year, but it costs 30-100 yuan to watch a drama. And iQIYI's continuous monthly gold membership is 25 yuan/month. The future trend of the price of micro-short dramas will also decline, and it is better to be exclusive to members than to fall naturally. This is not only a "benefit" for members of long video, but also an innovation and even subversion of the business model of micro-short theater for long video.
In addition, iQIYI has updated in documentaries, movies, animation, children's content, sports events and entertainment industries. In terms of documentaries, more than 20 original content has been launched focusing on realistic themes and humanities and history, covering head projects on crime, general history, cultural tourism and other themes, among which "Chinese History" is a large-scale general history documentary co-produced by iQiyi and China Education Television, which will be launched in the second half of 2025. The "Clearing the Fog" theater in cooperation with CCTV in the reality theme is divided into three series: serious case series, focus series, and counter-espionage series.
Continue to expand the IP ecosystem, and explore the "long-short-straight" model
Compared with long episodes, variety show content with a shorter production cycle and "flexible turning" ability has become the key promotion link of the film list of this enjoyment meeting, and the introduction of variety shows occupies most of the chapters of this enjoyment meeting.
Although compared with previous years, iQIYI's popular music variety this year has decreased, but it did release a positive signal this summer. The hit of "Let's Farm 2", "The King of Comedy's Stand-up Season" continues to expand the new genre of comedy comprehensive, and it seems that iQIYI has found more new incisions for methodological summary and IP linkage. For example, iQiyi previously produced the comedy micro-short drama of the same name of the popular group "Young Master and I" in the "Annual Drama Competition", and the new drama series "1 Million Promises" announced this time focuses on a hot drama "team building", and there are currently two crews of "Ning An Like a Dream" and "Seven O'clock Auspicious" have successfully team building and so on.
Next, with the gradual increase in seasonal dramas, this trend will also continue. Previously, "My Altay" drove a new round of local cultural tourism, Wang Xiaohui shared iQiyi's attempts in IP ecology at the end of his speech, "We closely integrate with urban civilization through dramas and other content, and bring a broad market through the form of 'a drama brings fire to a city'." iQIYI's IP ecosystem is being developed with more and more partners, and everyone is more conscious of building it and extending its life cycle. Nowadays, we have more and more seasonal dramas, such as drama variety linkage, joint development of dramas, film and comics, offline licensing experience, etc., which are all types for us to further expand the IP ecosystem. ”
In terms of variety show content, iQIYI will assemble the head lineup of variety show production in 2025, Yan Min, Che Che, Jin Lei, Lu Wei, Wang Zhengyu, Sun Li and other top variety show directors and producers in the industry, and launch a number of original new variety shows.
What impresses the entertainment unicorn is that Che Che will return to the identity of "chief director" in "New Rap 2025", not only the return of the original director to bring freshness to this 9-year variety show, but also the more important significance may be that its multiple identities such as trendy brands, music label founders, and short video experts can provide the possibility of imagination extension for variety show content.
In addition, including the return of "Farm 3" and "Ten Diligent Days" group comprehensive "Hello Farming Boy"; "Love Brothers and Sisters", which introduced the copyright of the hit overseas love variety show and integrated the elements of the original family into the love variety show; The official announcement was on the hot search, inviting a group of topical and personalized 55+ sisters to travel "Flowers All the Way"; Director Yan Min sat down and invited a group of "Big Entertainers", who were active on the offline stage many years ago and are now short video experts, to continue to expand the comedy "network" and other variety show content, I don't know what kind of increment it will bring to the market.
On the marketing side, with the launch of the micro-short drama theater, the "global ecology" of iQIYI's content marketing has also changed. Wu Gang said that iQIYI will further release the commercial potential of the new ecology of "long + short" dramas. Whether it is in the field of "long drama marketing" that can follow the layout of the whole life cycle of IP, or "short drama marketing" that focuses on theatrical operation and provides customization, in terms of variety show marketing, iQIYI has pioneered the "long and short straight" ("long video + short video + live broadcast") model, and it will be enabled in "Let's Farm the Land", and it will also be replicated in more projects such as "Burning Moon" and "My Home Field", providing brands with a full range of marketing closed-loop solutions.
Just as the theme of Gong Yu's speech "Everything flows, nothing is permanent, what will never change in the world is change", innovation and subversion will always be "unchanged" for the Internet film and television industry, with the new round of content strategy adjustment of long video stages, "change" will soon be slowly spread out in front of the audience.