The first full-length AI drama *The Later Journey to the West* has sparked a wave of daily limit surges in the A-share film and television sector.

Written by: Duoduo

Edited by: Mei Qi

Interpretation by Cultural & Entertainment Value Official:

ID:wenyujiazhiguan

On August 31, the A-share communication sector ushered in its most unexpected rally during this year.

Mango Super Media strongly posted a 20% price limit gain, Zhongguang Tianze, Huanrui Century and Decai Co., Ltd. firmly sealed the 10% price limit up. Related concept stocks including ChineseAll and Liujin Technology surged sharply simultaneously, and the sector sentiment was completely detonated.

What surprised the market is that the emergence of this rally was only driven by a newly launched drama — *Later Journey to the West*.

This mythological seasonal drama, produced by Mango TV, created by the AIGC Innovative Content Center of Mango TV and co-produced by Bojing Culture, has set two historic milestones in the industry: it is the first full-process AIGC long drama in China that successfully landed on the prime time slot of satellite TV, and it is also the first work nationwide that implements the innovative mode of "producing, reviewing and broadcasting simultaneously" after the "21 Policies for Radio and Television Industry" of the National Radio and Television Administration was rolled out.

Although AI technology is iterating rapidly, the application scenarios of AIGC in the cultural and entertainment industry are still limited to trailers, short videos and micro dramas. There has been no standardized AI long drama, let alone an AI long drama that can be broadcast on satellite TV.

The sharp rise of the capital market on August 31 is more like sending a signal to the whole industry: the launch of *Later Journey to the West* is far more than the release of an ordinary new drama. It represents the reconstruction of the film and television production mode in the cultural and entertainment industry and the innovation of content review and broadcasting rules. The double positive factors have made the capital show a positive attitude, and the era when AI technology completely rewrites the narrative of the cultural and entertainment industry may really arrive.

The first AI long drama is officially launched

The classic IP boosts the confidence of capital

The first episode of *Later Journey to the West* starts with the grand 1080th anniversary celebration of Sun Wukong held on Huaguo Mountain. The Bull Demon King, ten elders, Tongbi and other seniors who used to grow up with Sun Wukong take out Sun Wukong's cape to hold a sacred celebration ceremony. In the middle of the ceremony, the ten elders are petrified instantly, and Huaguo Mountain falls into great fear. At this moment, golden light bursts out from Huaguo Mountain, a stone ball rolls down, and a little young monkey is born, which is Sun Xiaosheng. The story unfolds slowly along with the growth of Sun Xiaosheng.

While following the drama, the Cultural & Entertainment Value Official first perceived the aesthetic upgrade of the work in its "external presentation": the pictures basically avoid the common fault of AI videos that "overemphasize technology but ignore aesthetics", and the visual experience is close to the standard of magical long dramas. In terms of "internal connotation", the work maintains the slow rhythm of long dramas with careful and clever story connection. At present, only three episodes of the drama have been updated. Except for the first episode, the second and third episodes require SVIP access to watch.

After *Later Journey to the West* was simultaneously broadcast on Hunan TV prime time slot and Mango TV on August 31, 2026, its premiere won the first place in the viewership of Mango TV in the same period. The share price of its producer Mango Super Media hit a 20% limit up on the same day, with more than 300,000 lots of sealed orders and a transaction volume exceeding 700 million yuan. As of 10:28 on September 1, Mango Super Media was still sealed at 20.38 yuan, marking its second consecutive 20% limit up. The stock has risen by 44% in two days, triggering collective cheers from A-share investors.

However, this innovative work certainly has certain shortcomings. On social media, some audiences said that "*Later Journey to the West* is a landmark long drama with historical status". Some other audiences gave bad feedback on the viewing experience, commenting that "all the monkeys with a little practice level have human-like popularity" and "is this just an animation?" At present, the word-of-mouth of audiences who have watched the work is completely polarized.

*Later Journey to the West* is adapted from the novel of the same name written in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, which has a history of more than 400 years and is one of the three official sequels of *Journey to the West*. Different from the classic narrative of the four masters and apprentices in *Journey to the West* who subdue demons and eliminate monsters, *Later Journey to the West* focuses on the contradiction that "the true scriptures are misinterpreted by the world and the Dharma is in chaos". It tells the story of "the second generation of the Journey to the West team going west to fetch the scriptures again", whose core story has more speculative value and better meets the emotional needs of contemporary young people.

Visual effect is the prominent advantage of this AI work. The creation team referred to the form of classic ancient paintings, integrated modern light and shadow techniques, traced cultural elements in all dimensions from scenes, lighting, costumes to props, and tried to reach the film-level texture. The Cultural & Entertainment Value Official found through official information that the co-producer of this drama, Beijing Bojing Culture, is not a well-known TV drama production company, but a production company focusing on documentaries. It has previously produced documentary series such as *Hexi Corridor* and *Wang Yangming*, and now owns the copyright of "Sun Xiaosheng".

The reason why Mango dares to hand over the first AI long drama to a documentary production company may be that it values its rigorous and high-quality content production experience.

The positive attitude of the capital market reflects the urgent desire of the cultural and entertainment industry for AI technology to empower long-form content. The first platform that delivers high-quality works naturally deserves the collective cheer from the A-share market. After all, the launch and satellite TV broadcast of *Later Journey to the West* officially marks that a real AIGC standard long drama has landed on the mainstream big screen, which provides a practical and replicable successful model for the AI-enabled cultural and entertainment industry.

Broadcasting while reviewing

Rewrite the rules of the cultural and entertainment industry

This long drama fully conforming to the mainstream film industrialization standard has 30 episodes in the first season, with 40 minutes per episode, and the whole production process is completed relying on AIGC technology. Compared with the 1-2 year production cycle, high actor remuneration and crew operation cost of traditional mythological long dramas, *Later Journey to the West* only took 5 months from filing to official broadcast, which extremely shortened the content production cycle and minimized the production cost.

However, the significance of *Later Journey to the West* is far more than the AI industrial production.

If AI technology reconstructs the productivity of the cultural and entertainment industry, the new mode of "producing, reviewing and broadcasting simultaneously" implemented by *Later Journey to the West* relies on the policy dividend of "21 Guidelines for Radio and Television Industry", completely breaks the old game rules of the film and television industry from the institutional level, and promotes the major reshuffle of the cultural and entertainment track.

For a long time, the domestic film and television industry has always followed the traditional mode of "completing the whole drama, submitting all episodes for review at one time, and broadcasting all episodes together", which has led to many persistent problems in the industry:

The long production cycle leads to slow capital return and high inventory pressure for small and medium-sized film and television companies;

The full-drama review mode has extremely high trial and error cost, and the content adjustment lags behind, which easily leads to project rework or suspension;

Content production is disconnected from the market, and the completed drama cannot be adjusted and optimized according to the audience feedback, leading to high trial and error cost.

Through the innovative broadcasting mode implemented by *Later Journey to the West*, which relies on the modular and lightweight production characteristics of AIGC, a brand-new cycle model of producing, submitting for review and broadcasting by episodes is realized, where the unaired content can be iterated and optimized synchronously, which perfectly adapts to the AI production logic.

These are exactly the core advantages that real-person film and television works cannot achieve on a large scale.

It can be seen that the case of *Later Journey to the West* combining policy breakthrough and technical dividend has stimulated the confidence of the capital market in the cultural and entertainment industry. The influx of capital directly accelerates the pattern differentiation of the cultural and entertainment industry, and head platforms with core resources have begun to seize the track dividend.

The AIGC Content Center of Mango Super Media, on the premise of maintaining the dual-channel advantages of satellite TV and video platforms, has taken the lead in running through the whole commercial chain of AI long dramas and become the first beneficiary of this round of industry reform. In addition, iQiyi has built its own AIGC Nado APP to make early layout and reserve high-quality talents and works for high-quality AI content in the future. It is reported that iQiyi's AI long drama is also in intense production. Youku's Orca AI is ready to go, and Tencent Video has strong support from the rich IP resources of China Literature. The four head long video platforms of iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video and Mango TV are forming a brand-new pattern in the differentiated competition under the AI context.

AI can create visual wonders

Humanistic core is the ultimate barrier

The limit-up carnival in the capital market has obviously made *Later Journey to the West* a phenomenal work in the cultural and entertainment industry in 2026. But putting aside the track dividend and technical gimmicks, the value of this full-AI long drama is to send a warning to the AI cultural and entertainment industry that is running blindly: although algorithms can reproduce pictures, create special effect wonders and iterate story frameworks, they can never replace humanistic thoughts, value output and cultural core, which are the competitive barriers for the long-term development of the AI content industry.

The reason why Mango TV chose to adapt *Later Journey to the West* is that it is not an ordinary magical pleasure story, and its profound realistic satire and speculative value was once evaluated in Lu Xun's work *A Brief History of Chinese Fiction* as: "Although it is a fictional story, it actually contains satire."

The Cultural & Entertainment Value Official believes that the breakout success of *Later Journey to the West* is essentially the integration of technology and humanistic connotation. Four hundred years ago, the author used the story of re-fetching the scriptures to criticize the social chaos of misinterpreted scripture meanings, monopolized authority and blind obedience, and advocated the idea of cultivating mind to get rid of delusions, reflecting on the secular world and abandoning conformity, which is the part that fits the work attitude of contemporary young people in the workplace and daily life. The drama retains the core idea of the original work "seeking for true mind and getting rid of blind obedience", echoes the self-exploration of contemporary young people with the growth