Exclusive Interview with the core creative team of *Armed to the Song Dynasty*: Without professional industry background and paid traffic promotion, how did this grassroots team produce a premium-quality hit that has amassed 12 billion views?

A short drama *Weapons and the Song Dynasty* created by six "amateurs" with no formal film and television professional training tore off the "low-intelligence" label of "AI short drama" single-handedly in the second half of 2026.

When the first season of the work was launched on August 21, *Weapons and the Song Dynasty* performed moderately in the short drama category. But the day after the fourth season went online, it topped the Redfruit AI New Drama Chart, with its popularity exceeding 50 million. When the ninth season was launched, the team truly felt its explosive popularity, and the popularity of the tenth season directly soared to 82.06 million.

On November 4, the Weibo topic "The Redfruit historical short drama is beyond expectation" became a trending search. On November 6, the total play count hit 120 billion, taking the top spot on the Redfruit AI Chart. Starting slow and gaining momentum strongly, with tens of millions of collections, an average popularity of nearly 50 million across ten seasons, and nearly 4 million people reserving unreleased episodes, these are unprecedented long-form serialized data in the short drama industry.

If we put these figures in the broader context of the AI drama market, only 0.48% of the 221,900 works have exceeded 100 million in popularity, which is an extreme value rather than the average.

As of press time, *Weapons and the Song Dynasty* still ranks high on multiple Redfruit charts

The reason why *Weapons and the Song Dynasty* has won word-of-mouth among audiences and spontaneous promotion by fans lies in its rigorous content and high density of historical knowledge. For example, the color coding of official uniforms, accessories, footwear, household registration and travel permits, and etiquette hierarchy have all been verified. Audience feedback further boosted the work's popularity: viewers spontaneously shared knowledge about Song Dynasty history in bullet comments, netizens built a research platform, and marked the official systems and battle maps in three layers: "historical fact, fiction, and speculation".

This knowledge-intensive short drama even received praise from official Party media. *Banyuetan* published a commentary titled "This Short Drama Is Different", which was reposted by CCTV.com; *Economic Daily* released an article "*Weapons and the Song Dynasty* Offers Another Possibility for Short Dramas" to recognize the work; Guangming Online published an article "Technology Empowerment Should Be Built on Solid Content" to give positive feedback. The recognition from several central media outlets points to the same conclusion: AI can reduce costs, but cost reduction does not mean lowering standards.

The collective curiosity from the short drama industry focuses on the composition of this atypical creator team: there are no professional film and television practitioners, they write online from all over the country, the members include stay-at-home moms, ride-hailing drivers and delivery workers, the main creator learned AI production online by paying 1000 yuan, and the team never spends on traffic promotion... With a series of counter-intuitive operations, they have created the most talked-about and positively reviewed AI short drama this year.

On November 6, Entertainment Value Official interviewed three core creators of *Weapons and the Song Dynasty*, whose team is also named "Old Eleven". We talked with "Old Eleven" about the widely spread information online, and dug deep into their real creation process.

Interviewees — Chief Planner: Zhang Hansheng, Chief Producer: Li Zhaohua, Chief Director: He Xiushan

"The ten million-yuan return is an estimate from the outside world,

we have never received that much money."

Entertainment Value Official: Have there been any changes in your current life?

Old Eleven: To be honest, our financial situation is much better than before. But after we became famous and the work became a hit, the frequency of interviews from all kinds of media is too high, which is a bit disturbing. Our original intention was to make dramas quietly, and we actually don't like all kinds of activities now, but we have no choice.

Entertainment Value Official: It is widely rumored outside that the cost of your work is around 1 million yuan, with a return of around 10 million yuan?

Old Eleven: The 10 million yuan return is estimated by the media, which is not accurate. I have never disclosed the specific income, and I have not received that much money.

Entertainment Value Official: Does this 1 million yuan only cover computing power, not including labor and copyright?

Old Eleven: Yes, we are OPC one-person companies, there is no personnel cost, all costs are for computing power, and the copyright is also free.

Entertainment Value Official: The price of Token is rising this year, has the proportion of Token cost changed?

Old Eleven: No change. Seedance gets more user-friendly with every iteration, and we have paid for annual memberships, so the platform price increase has little to do with us. The quality and effect of Seedance 2.5 are completely different from before, we could not achieve such effects in the past.

Entertainment Value Official: You had two small hits before, also on Redfruit, what are their approximate play counts or collection counts?

Old Eleven: The first one got more than 20 million views on Douyin. At that time we mainly operated on Douyin, we were not familiar with many functions in the Redfruit backend, so I can't remember the exact numbers. The second one got 160 million views on Douyin, with more than 300,000 collections on Redfruit, but it was taken down after 6 days. We didn't know the rules well at that time, and violated some review red lines. After we made more works, we gradually learned these rules.

The work we made *Return From Retirement: The Bodyguard Is Not Easy to Provoke* was launched on October 23, it has got more than 1 million collections and ranks third on the reservation list, which is also a small hit.

Entertainment Value Official: Have you ever spent on traffic promotion?

Old Eleven: We never spend on traffic promotion, we don't even know how to do it. After the drama is completed and passed the review, we release it on several platforms at the same time, and it goes online directly.

Entertainment Value Official: The industry is changing very fast, are you worried about next year?

Old Eleven: No, really not.

Content creation depends on life, life is a very broad topic, human creativity is infinite, so is drama making. Life is infinite, and the source of creativity is also infinite. AI is just our tool for making dramas, not the only factor for making a good drama. The real core barrier comes from our judgment of people, society and all kinds of things, and our perception of life. Many characters can be created inspired by real life, the themes are very extensive, so I don't have any anxiety.

"We all share the consensus that this script will be a hit"

Entertainment Value Official: Why did you choose the IP of *Weapons and the Song Dynasty* (hereinafter referred to as *Entering Song*) from Tomato?

Old Eleven: We look for IP in the copyright library of the Short Drama Creator Center, where short drama creators can pick novels they want to make. We read a lot of novels at first, and finally chose this script because our team mainly makes male-oriented dramas. I pick all the IPs for our team, I am relatively old, with relatively traditional ideas, and I prefer relatively orthodox, passionate and hardcore themes.

Entertainment Value Official: When you started making *Entering Song*, what was your expectation for this drama?

Old Eleven: We positioned it as a high-quality and hit drama from the very beginning, we thought the script was a once-in-a-lifetime great story. We spent half a month on pre-preparation. After getting the script, we all shared the consensus that this script would be a hit, so we spent more time polishing the character design drawings, scene drawings and script adaptation.

The preparation for the first season started on August 1, and it was not launched until August 21, which was much slower than all our previous dramas. We set a common goal from the very beginning — to make it as a hit drama.

The hit we defined is not only good in data, but also can stand the scrutiny of public aesthetics and historical details, so we spent a lot of time on it.

The official preparation period started on August 1, and we also spent a long time selecting team members to confirm the final lineup. This person is our chief producer and chief editor of the team. We have produced many dramas before, some of which were being produced at the same time, and we selected some of the best people to work on this drama.

When Li Qingzhao appeared on the screen, netizens praised her as "the Li Qingzhao in my mind"

Entertainment Value Official: On what basis did you judge that this drama would become a hit? Is it the traffic of the novel, or the story itself?

Old Eleven: The novel didn't have much traffic at that time, with less than 100,000 clicks and few online readers, it was definitely not as famous as it is now. We chose the novel because we like male-oriented, passionate and hardcore stories, which can bring us a feeling of surging passion. Sometimes we are moved, sometimes we are angry, and the work can arouse all the emotions of the audience, so we positioned it as a high-quality hit drama from the start.

Another very important point is that it is a time-travel drama without a system setting, which distinguishes it from other time-travel dramas.

In addition, the author is very rigorous about historical systems, official positions and the way characters speak, we think it is a very high-quality historical novel, which is also very important. The excellent lines are also a point we value very much when selecting IP.

Entertainment Value Official: How long is the whole preparation cycle roughly?

Old Eleven: It is divided into several stages. We selected the IP before August, and then spent about 7 days preparing the team members. When selecting people, we need to check all their previous works, working attitude and delivery performance, to judge how many people are suitable for making *Entering Song*. During this period, we considered whether to have 5 or 7 people, because we need to balance quality and delivery speed, and finally we settled on 6 people.

We entered the preparation period on August 1, and started to work on the script and production. We read the novel first to make the initial character design, and Director He produced the first few episodes. The first 20 minutes were finished on August 9, which took more than a week. The first 10 episodes were made by two people, which also took a week.

Entertainment Value Official: This drama has achieved such great results, is there a replicable methodology?

Old Eleven: We combined our own capabilities, the script and the original creative ideas, and previewed the content of the first 10 episodes, so the team was very confident. Then as the drama continued to gain popularity, it gradually became the current situation.

The team also did a review, and Teacher Zhang (Zhang Hansheng) put forward a very important point: first, we targeted at male-oriented content, which is our strength; second, we need to include patriotism, passion and spread positive energy. I believe that if we make good content and spread positive energy, it will be discovered sooner or later.

As for replication, what level we can reach at this speed for the next work depends on many factors. The most demanding part is the details, we have to polish them meticulously.

On August 23, *Return From Retirement: This Bodyguard Is Not Easy to Provoke* also became a hit, now it has nearly 2 million collections, with 5 million reservations, ranking third on the reservation list. I think the methodology is: theme, content, plus the creators.

Entertainment Value Official: Are historical themes more likely to produce hits now?

Old Eleven: Not necessarily. There are many people making historical dramas, and most of them are not hits. The most important thing is our content and creative ideas, and the second is the thinking of every main creator in the production team, whether he can truly immerse himself in the corresponding emotions.

The "death in battle" scene in episodes 38 and 39 of season 6 was made by the chief director, which is also the episode with the strongest comprehensive technical capability of the team. He wrote a song for that scene himself. I asked him, did you cry when you made it? He said yes. If you don't cry yourself, the audience will definitely not cry. If you don't laugh yourself, the audience will not laugh either. When making works, you must first treat yourself as an audience, and stand in the audience's position.

We often say that the audience is our food and clothing parents, we often check the comments section to see how the audience comments on each plot. Everyone must immerse themselves in the scene, and put themselves in the position of the male and female leads of that part of the story.

Entertainment Value Official: The original author is an English teacher? Did