Upcoming fantasy wuxia drama Ever Night (Part 1) stars Chen Feiyu, Song Yiren, Yuan Bingyan and Meng Ziyi in the leading roles, and will release 2 episodes every Wed-Fri on Tencent and Youtube beginning tonight. VIP members get a 6 episode head start.
Theme song by Jane Zhang ; Tan Weiwei
Xianxia epic Ever Night: Dawn of the Empire 将夜：帝国的清晨. released another trailer to announce its streaming on October 31st. The new trailer seems to focus on the male lead, played Chen Feiyu, and his love interests – Song Yiren, Meng Ziyi, Yuan Bingyan, and Tong Yao. We’ve seen a string of xianxia flops, so don’t get your hopes too much despite how pretty it is.
Even though the female lead looks twelve and the male lead looks twenty, he was seventeen and she twenty-two when they filmed this last year.
The biggest xianxia/ fantasy wuxia drama starring newcomers, Ever Night将夜, has released a full trailer. Based on the book of the same name by Maoni (Fighter of the Destiny), the series will be released in three parts, with the first one being Ever Night: Dawn of the Empire 将夜：帝国的清晨. Relatively new actors Chen Feiyu, Song Yiren, Sun Zujun, Meng Ziyi, Yuan Bingyan head the cast of seasoned actors like Hu Jun, Leo Lai, Ni Dahong, Adam Cheng, Dylan Kuo, and Tong Yao.
Ning Que is a soldier who has came to the capital to clear his family. Yet when he finds out that his servant Sangsang is the embodiment of Ever Night, the foretold forever nighttime of humanity, the two go on the run.
The series was shot on-location in Xinjiang, an increasingly popular filming location where you can get the desert, vast grasslands, forests, and snowy mountains all in the same location around the same time. If you ignore the whole castle at the beginning, the sets, clothing, and definitely directing/editing appear to be some of the most promising of recent xianxia dramas . The on-location scenery shots are beautiful, the cast seems to have great chemistry based on the trailer, and the romantic BGM is gorgeous.
Leon Lai (Wine War) is the latest in a string of movie actors (Zhou Xun, Zhang Hanyu, Chen Kun, Ni Ni etc.) making drama comebacks.
Given that this is set partly in Chengdu, all I could think about was Chengdu’s famous ear cleaning services.
With a view to his mating, the one and only object of his life, the Night Peacock moth is gifted with a wonderful prerogative. He is able to discover the object of his desire in spite of distance, obstacles and darkness.
– Jean-Henri Fabre, The Life of the Caterpillar
The go-to mainstream actor for artsy films, Liu Ye, joins Liu Yifei in the first film to be screened in China by writer and director Dai Sijie since Balzac and the Seamstress in 2002.
Night Peacock 夜孔雀 tells of flute player Elsa (Liu Yifei) and her romantic escapades with first a scholar of silk (Leon Lai) and then a tattoo artist (Liu Ye). Yu Shaoqun joins the cast as the silk scholar’s Leon Lai’s son, a Sichuanese opera singer who appears to be into cross-dressing and may be in a mental asylum based on the trailer.
I’m guessing that Liu Yifei is banking on this to be a career-changing film after a series of poor commercial flicks and poor acting. Hopefully she can prove herself this time. The film airs on May 20th.
Fan Bingbing really does have a thing for famous Tang dynasty women. This is the second time she’s played Yang Guifei.
Lady of the Dynasty has released a trailer and is set to release on July 30th. This rendition of Yang Guifei stars Fan Bingbing, Leon Lai, Wu Chun, Joan Chen, Ning Jing, and random white guy Steve Boergadine.
More stills below the cut.
Nicholas Tse, who just released his purported “last” album, has begun filming for his new movie, Bodyguards and Assassins, set in Hong Kong during the Qing Dynasty. Despite playing a rather bottom of the rung character, who is billed as “the rickshaw driver”, he is the lead of this star-filled, big-budgeted tale about many who protected Dr. Sun Yat-sen during a trip the famed leader took to Hong Kong in October of 1905 (the film title in Chinese is Besieged in October).