The dust has settled on historical romance series Zhu Yu (逐玉), which commenced filming today. After all, the show was riddled with issues from the start. Zhang Linghe’s fans protested his involvement, while Tian Xiwei’s fans were also against the drama. Both sides reportedly fought over billing — the order of names to signify who is headlining the show.
It’s the Blossom Director
We’ve seen cases where showrunners try to appease all sides by indicating that billing is not in any particular order, and they did just that here. Zhu Yu announced the booting ceremony, but only the crew names were mentioned, leaving out the cast. On that note, the timing seems perfect to announce that Zeng Qingjie is at the helm. After all, the director, who had mainly worked on short drams like Provoke and A Familiar Stranger, finally got a full-length drama to his name (it’s Blossom), which has been surpassing expectations lately.
A Different Way to Announce the Drama
Meanwhile, the announcement poked fun at the fights over billing, with the usual “no particular order” disclaimer not applying to the cast this time but rather to the two platforms — iQIYI and Tencent — broadcasting the drama. The official drama accounts even posted a fun little photo symbolizing harmony between the two streaming giants: a pig for Zhu Yu, a penguin for Tencent, and a kiwi for iQIYI.
Before the end of the day, the drama finally announced its leads, carefully skirting around the billing issue. First came a solo post announcing Zhang Linghe as the male lead, Xie Zheng, followed by a second post listing the supporting roles, and finally a third introducing Tian Xiwei as the female lead, Fan Changyu. Despite these efforts, fans from both sides flooded the comments insisting their idol had the top billing.
Meanwhile, many are left musing: why does billing even matter? Whether the drama is good overall should be the real focus. Other cast joining the show include Ren Hao, Kong Xue’er, Deng Kai and more. Ye Zuxin makes a special appearance.
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Drama_fluff
as an international audience, I font and never will understand this either. why does billing matters?
Kai
Just the kiddie .. ” My thingee is bigger than yours” … show-off mentality
Kendra
Well what I know is that the guys fandom are obsessed about billing and keep on targeting his FL’s. He was just a second billed actor in the last two dramas that he made with a very talented young actress same scenario they also targeted the young actress. But still his fans can’t do anything about it because she was the first billing of those two dramas.