Unexpectedly landing on the spotlight recently is Better Days actress Zhou Dongyu who found herself on the list of trending topics after being indirectly linked to the case of a Zhejiang TV employee sentenced to five years in prison and fined 500,000 RMB for accepting bribes. The drama in question, Ten Miles of Spring Wind Can’t Compare to You 春风十里, 不如你, which also stars Zhou Dongyu, was reported to also have the actress’ studio onboard as one of its investors.
This is the second time a drama the actress has starred in has flown directly on Netizen’s radar and comes in the heels of last week’s heated discussion over the unusually high remuneration that she allegedly received for Behind the Scenes where she co-starred with Luo Jin.
In the production company Dinglong Culture’s annual report revealed online, Zhou Dongyu Studio was listed as the company’s top provider with over 100M+ RMB payouts for 2017 and 2018. Luo Jin Studio was also listed in the top 3 with numbers amounting over 77M+ RMB for the same period. Since Behind the Scenes was the only project the company had with the two actors, it was surmised that the amounts were equivalent to both actor’s pay. It’s no surprise then why some Netizens called into question the high sum they’ve allegedly received.
Now if you’re one of those people scratching their heads at the whopping number named above, industry veteran Yu Zheng offers a possible explanation with a post on his social media saying “ I think it’s funny how people get carried away about actor’s high salaries. But that person is at the very top of the pyramid. Not everyone can get away with asking for that much money. Generally speaking, tens of thousands (of RMB) are allocated to three or four months of filming, and then the production company gets a big cut to finish off post production. After paying off taxes, not much is left. I’m not a fan of the high pay of actors, that’s why I always like using newcomers!
I hope everyone will support the rookies and watch their dramas so that they can gradually replace the “high income” stars. This is called making the most of one’s youth…”
‘Course, you can take that all with a grain of salt since part of Yu Zheng’s explanation started to sound like a promotion of his new dramas and rookies. But generally speaking, it does make you think that with all the administrative expenses draining the budget alone, paying out more than a hundred million yuan to an actor does sound quite like a lofty amount for a drama.
