The "domestically produced foreign-language drama" trend is on the rise: AI-generated overseas student-themed productions from various provinces are vying to set their romantic stories in South Korea, the United States and Japan.
I finally get to see "domestic Korean dramas" in my lifetime.
Recently, the "Sichuan-Chongqing Tyrannosaurus Rex" with full combat power, the carefree northeastern girl, the sports transfer student from Shandong, and even the ghost catcher from the mysterious Miao ethnic family... have appeared in Korean campuses one after another.
For a while, the "Korean Wave" has become popular again, opening up a new track for AI short dramas. But the protagonist is not any new work from South Korea, but the group of people deeply influenced by Korean dramas, who used AI to create "domestic Korean dramas" that are more suitable for the preference of Chinese audiences.
The most popular one, *Pretty Malice*, recently updated its fourth episode, and the number of likes quickly exceeded one million. On Douyin, the four episodes of this drama have accumulated more than 120 million views in total, and the fifth episode is expected to be updated during the National Day holiday. Netizens urging for updates crowded in the comment section: "If it's a Korean drama, give me a proper one-hour episode each time."
Coincidentally, under the similar development trend, a large number of "domestic American dramas" and "domestic Japanese dramas" have also emerged simultaneously. These AI foreign-language dramas are not created for going global. They carry strong styles of Korean, American and Japanese dramas, integrate Chinese aesthetics and the logic of domestic short drama satisfaction points, and re-enter the domestic market, setting off a new wave of enthusiasm.
AI short dramas with no unappealing actors have become the most compatible presentation form for idol dramas
Judging from the AI foreign-language dramas currently on the market, their core is basically idol dramas. Taking "domestic Korean dramas" as an example, whether it is the chaebol campus style of *Pretty Malice* or the soul-swapping style of *Misplaced Life*, they all fall within the scope of idol dramas.
This is because the profound influence of Korean idol dramas on the domestic market is self-evident, and the origin of domestic idol dramas is deeply affected by Japanese and Korean idol dramas. Therefore, when the characters in the drama wear Korean-style school uniforms, elements such as chaebols, presidents, tycoons, and campus bullying appear repeatedly, plus the Korean-style romantic scenes emphasized by slow motion, a strong Korean drama style comes to the audience. Such AI short dramas already have the long-precipitated audience base of the Korean drama market, and the simultaneously launched perspective of domestic international students, as well as the occasional dialect complaints, further lower the audience's threshold for immersion.
On this basis, domestic AI video tools have gone through a new round of iteration, and AI has a deeper understanding of various video styles. For example, the creative team of *Pretty Malice* once mentioned that after Seedance 2.5 was launched, directly inputting "Korean revenge movie style" can get a relatively mature effect. This means that the cost of creating a work in Korean drama style has been greatly reduced.
This is particularly obvious in the creation of idol dramas, because the two most cost-intensive elements - good-looking actors and dreamy set design - have their costs further diluted with the intervention of AI. The reason why *Pretty Malice* caught people's eyes at the beginning is that after one authoritative-looking face, there is another more authoritative-looking face. Even in the Korean language context, the exaggerated mouth movements of AI actors when speaking do not look so out of place.
Similar performances also appear in other AI foreign-language dramas. For example, in the "domestic American drama" *The Accident*, the heroine's face is strikingly similar to Anne Hathaway, while the hero, in addition to the tough American-style facial features, also creates a cute puppy-like image. In the "domestic Japanese drama" *Zihan from Northeast China Reforms Japanese High School*, several Japanese-style handsome men all have their own eye-catching charm.
From this perspective, full cast of good-looking characters has almost become the standard configuration of AI foreign-language dramas. The creative team also pays more attention to the detailed portrayal of the main characters' images, especially in the female-oriented track, the modeling of the male lead often costs more. To a certain extent, with AI modeling becoming more and more stable, AI short dramas with no unappealing actors have become a more suitable content scenario for idol dramas: the love process that can better satisfy the audience's imagination and the more attractive lead setting are the key to attracting most audiences to get hooked at the beginning.
AI international students reform foreign campuses, the satisfaction point logic of domestic short dramas is the core driving force for popularity
But essentially, no matter it is Korean drama style, Japanese drama style or American drama style, the core they follow is still the satisfaction point logic that has been repeatedly verified by domestic short dramas: fight back when you are treated unfairly.
A typical example is that the creator of *The Accident* clearly stated: "I have never attended an American high school, and my perception of American high schools comes from the well-known American dramas that everyone is familiar with." In other words, these AI foreign-language dramas do not restore the real overseas, but restore the overseas in the imagination of Chinese audiences. This "domestically exclusive feature" precisely hits the content preferences of domestic viewers.
So we can see that most of the current AI foreign-language dramas follow the "campus rectification" satisfying storyline. In *Pretty Malice*, the heroine with super high combat power is extremely insensitive, she is slow to react to the malice shown by others, and through a series of coincidences, she changes the campus atmosphere dominated by chaebols; *Zihan from Northeast China Reforms Japanese High School* even directly writes "campus rectification" into the title, the bold and generous northeastern girl gradually solves every trick and rectifies the campus during her study in Japan...
But it should be noted that after putting these satisfaction points into the shell of foreign-language dramas, the new content often raises the plot satisfaction to a new height. Just like the famous scene of "Xue Zhenzhu confronting the mistress" became a hit, someone made a South Korean chaebol version of it. The same plot of "confronting the mistress" brings several times higher satisfaction. Of course, essentially, this kind of satisfaction comes from the superposition of multiple satisfaction points, and the repeated creation of similar content quickly consumes the audience's sense of pleasure.
This also determines that there is almost no technical barrier for current AI foreign-language dramas. After one drama becomes a hit, a large number of similar content will emerge in a short period of time. AI international students from Sichuan-Chongqing, Northeast China, Shandong, Chaoshan and other places go to the United States, Japan and South Korea one after another, starting their own "rectification" journey.
In addition to homogenization, new controversies are also expanding, and the "tribute" boundary of many AI foreign-language dramas is quite vague.
A highly upvoted comment under *Pretty Malice* reads: "It pays tribute to *Cheongdam International High School*, *Pyramid Game*, *The Friendly Competition*, *Study Group*, *True Beauty*, *Tough Education*, *Extraordinary You*." And as more "domestic Korean dramas" appear, some viewers question: It feels like they are all rewritten based on *Cheongdam International High School*. The falling plot involved in *The Seventh Seat* is almost a copy of the same plot in the Korean drama *Penthouse*.
Similar phenomena also appear in "domestic American dramas" and "domestic Japanese dramas", reflecting that in the process of the rise of AI foreign-language dramas, many creators have taken American dramas, Japanese dramas and Korean dramas as new material libraries. But wandering on the edge of content splicing and plagiarism, it also lays a certain hidden danger of infringement for the development of domestic foreign-language dramas, which is also a major feature of this type of content in the early stage of development.
MCN institutions are actively deploying, and commercial exploration has been fully launched
In this process, the reason why domestic foreign-language dramas develop so fast is also inseparable from the active promotion of MCN institutions.
From the overall pace of the industry, the rapidly developing AI short dramas have become a new transformation position for many MCN institutions that incubate plot-oriented short videos. The previously hit series *The Fired Girls* was created by the team from the MCN institution "My Film & TV", whose two plot accounts incubated on Douyin have a total of about 8 million fans. The currently popular AI foreign-language dramas also gradually emerged at the same stage.
Among them, the MCN institution behind *Pretty Malice* is OST Media. Up to now, OST Media has incubated more than 80 AI accounts. Before *Pretty Malice*, the content it produced had already explored the idol drama market. For example, the institutional account @Day and Eggplant gained more than 1.3 million fans only with the work *My Bestie Enters a Boys' School Through a Book*. Although this drama does not have a clear Korean drama style, it has leaned towards Korean style in terms of scenes, costumes and other aspects. Later, *Pretty Malice* went a step further and brought "domestic Korean dramas" to the public view on the basis that AI idol dramas have tapped the market.
*My Bestie Enters a Boys' School Through a Book*
The reason is that creators who have been making plot-oriented short videos for a long time are highly sensitive to market trends. Under the general trend of AI content becoming popular, there are a large number of AI recreations of various classics on short video platforms. Various styles of AI secondary creation versions have appeared for works such as *Empresses in the Palace*, *The Story of Ming Lan*, *The First Half of My Life*, and even Lin Daiyu and Sun Wukong have gained a large number of CP fans under AI creation. Today's various AI foreign-language dramas can also be regarded as an extension of this direction, and the styles and "tributed" content of many AI foreign-language dramas involve overseas classic works.
Following this context, the more common domestic foreign-language dramas are currently closer to the short video mode, with a single episode duration of 5-10 minutes, and only one episode is updated each time. The not-so-fast update frequency allows more players to enter the market for a share of the pie. Many similar MCN institutions have begun to make efforts in this direction. In the past 1-2 months, MCNs such as Voice of Wish, Huimeng Media, Gumai Jiahe, and Malt Media have been intensively producing AI foreign-language dramas.
Similarly, its business model also focuses more on short video gameplay. On the one hand, the main characters in the drama open accounts synchronously, taking the AI idol route. On the other hand, suspected commercial placement advertising spaces have appeared in some episodes, such as Dewu in *Pretty Malice*, Sony in *The Accident*, and Uni-President beverages, etc. In addition, *Misplaced Life* also tried advance paid screening, and the drama was turned to paid unlock when it was updated to the 7th episode.
More commercial attempts also indirectly confirm the popularity of domestic foreign-language dramas. With good market response, some creators also intend to try to produce AI short drama content with shorter single-episode duration and releasing all episodes at once. Even, similar works have appeared on Hongguo, some of which add rebirth and system elements on the basis of idol dramas, among which *I Pretend to Be a Heir of an Aristocratic Family in a Noble Academy* broke into the TOP10 of the new manhua drama list.
From this perspective, the investment of MCN institutions and the accelerated commercial exploration have boosted the explosion of domestic foreign-language dramas, and the market is constantly trying new directions. After all, from the perspective of long-term development, what the audience needs is not just superposition of satisfaction points and satisfaction stories with new shells. To retain the audience continuously, creators still need to show more sincerity.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Mirror Entertainment", author: Mirror Entertainment, published with authorization from 36Kr.