#and i feel like chen feiyu may have given a bit more of a novel accurate vibe

[harocat]

hi i heard someone say about melody of golden age and love game in eastern fantasy that these two shows are top 5 of 2024, is that true, from where i live in usa its quite hard to get accurate news about how well a drama like melody of golden age does, thank you and nice blog i followed right away

Thank you!!

Definitely LGIEF is one of the top five costume dramas of the year. Not only has it passed something like 1.5 billion views, but it has some of the top traffic of the year on douyin, weibo, douban, etc. and it has some of the top merchandise sales.

It's been a pretty big viral hit, seemingly surpassing expectations. It also massively raised the profile of its stars; DYX seems to have gone from sort of bubbling under to big stardom, and Esther was already a big star but this raised her profile further. This makes the third year in a row she has the top overall drama from her microgeneration of actresses ('95 stars). 2022- Love Between Fairy and Devil, 2023- My Journey to You, 2024- LGIEF.

(Fun fact: Stellar has posters for only two of their dramas up in the main office- LGIEF and LBFAD. Esther really is their lucky charm.)

It's harder to find explicit numbers on Melody of Golden Age, because it wasn't talked about as much and also because it wasn't on one of the three biggest streaming platforms. It was not a big hit and certainly wasn't one of the top five dramas of the year (or even top ten), but AFAIK it did about as well as expected? It wasn't a big budget drama. I don't think it was considered a noteworthy bomb, nor a big hit. Please correct me if I'm wrong, anyone. Yuxi's other show, White Cat Legend, also wasn't a big hit, but to be fair to it, it was not a big budget project at all, and also--- almost every single costume drama on iqiyi this year was a huge bomb. WCL had some of the better numbers, despite them not being very good.

You can probably expect Ding Yuxi to pick up some bigger projects from now on now that he's raised his profile so much! He has one unreleased show already filmed, and he's filming another right now, but once it's done, I imagine he'll have a lot of cool opportunities available that he didn't have before.

Previous to LGIEF, one of his only big budget projects was Stellar's second xianxia, Love You Seven Times, and it was considered a flop (it's a fun show though). Like with LBFAD, Stellar wanted to cast actors who weren't huge stars in the lead roles, but it just didn't work out with them the way it did with LBFAD. Otherwise, he's been in mostly low to mid-budget costume dramas and moderns. He wasn't even the original actor they had in mind for Ziqi. They originally wanted a bigger star opposite Esther like Chen Feiyu, Cheng Yi, etc., but when none of them worked out, Ding Yuxi took the role as a favor. And thank god he did.