The Untamed 陈情令, a very loose adaption of Moxiang Tongxiu’s BL novel Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation 魔道祖师 has started filming, and cast X-Nine idol Xiao Zhan (Oh! My Emperor) as Wei Wuxian and Wang Yibo (Love Actually) as Lan Wangji.
English fan translation of the novel | Teaser for animated version
The pugilist world is ruled by the powerful Wen clan, which dominates over the smaller Lan, Jiang, Nie and Jin households. The carefree Wei Wuxian becomes fast friends with the righteous Lan Wangji, and during their adventures, the pair find out that the head of the Wen clan is the evil mastermind behind a series of plots that would wreak havoc upon the lands.
Wei Wuxian’s attempts to protect the innocent members of the Wen clan from unfair persecution leads to disaster, and he goes MIA in the process. Wei Wuxian reappears sixteen years later, and works together with good friend Lan Wangji to solve a series of murder mysteries, eventually finding and defeating the true culprit.
Meng Ziyi (Legend of the Condor Heroes 2016) plays Wen Qing and Xuan Lu (Soul Ferry) costars as Wei Wuxian’s older disciple sister Jiang Yanli. Reportedly, they will not be romantically entangled with the male protagonists, which should appease some fans of the original who are already irritated the drama changed the BL romance to sworn brotherhood. Wang Zhuocheng (signed under Huayi) and Yu Bin (Idol Producer) play Jiang Cheng and Wen Ning respectively, both friends of Wei Wuxian.
Directed by Zheng Weiwen (Secrets of the Three Kingdoms) and Chen Jialin (Above the Clouds), the 42 episode web drama will premiere on Tencent next year.
Xiao Zhan has a contract with New Classics Media, which is why he’ll be seen in their upcoming dramas The Wolf and Thankful for the Remaining Years. Also very pretty (reminds me of a younger, skinnier Wallace Huo), though his acting still needs work:
HIII Does anyone know where to watch the drama online when it is released?? I kinda want to watch it when it streams
This drama doesn’t even have a trailer, and air date is also TBC. It’ll definitely stream on Tencent when it airs – whether it is made available on Youtube / Viki or not will depend on the distributor.
Also tho, if you don’t need subs, you can probably try sites like maplestage and stuff. If Tencent makes it vip restricted and stuff, if you just type/copy the chinese name you’ll usually find a few sources.
I’m surprised they’re mildly butchering the original. I haven’t gotten very far in the novel, mostly because the translation is limited and ancient-setting audiobooks takes exponentially greater concentration for me, but the novel is REALLY popular. It’s basically got almost like a cult following and all reviews I’ve read/seen think this novel’s fantastic.
There’s also an animation coming 7/7 of this year and fans are super excited. Surprised they’re making the live action both not-BL and so…sloppy, for lack of better words. Despite being BL, I would’ve thought they would treat this as a bit more of an IP (is that the word?) project (the big ones that are based off popular source material).
The drama version is basically a fanfic loosely based on the original. The production company is taking great care to make sure the cast “look right” for the characters though.
Seems like the production company may be willing to accept plot suggestions. Perhaps it might be willing to change WWX and LWJ going their separate ways at the end (per original synopsis submitted to the censors).