Mainland Chinese film and TV studio Linmon Media says it is expanding its commitment to the costume drama series genre.
At this week’s TIFFCOM film and TV rights market, which takes place alongside the Tokyo International Film Festival, gave updates on four costume drama series and other contemporary shows. These will release through 2025 and early 2026.
Executives were also in Tokyo for the international launch of “The Unseen Sister,” the company’s Midi Z-directed mystery drama film that played in the Tokyo International Film Festival’s main competition. The film had its commercial release in China on Saturday and has earned $15.7 million in its first seven days.
Previously announced, and the closest of its series to completion, is “Moonlit Reunion,” a romantic-fantasy drama, set in Chang An city during the Tang Dynasty period and starring Xu Kai and Tian Xiwei. Tencent Video has the title for China while Linmon is itself handling the rights in international territories. It is expected to be delivered with 40 episodes in the second quarter of 2025.
“A Dream Within a Dream,” costume comedy-romance will follow. Its story involves time travel and a struggling actress who crosses over into the fantasy world depicted in a screenplay and tries to escape the destiny that has already been written for her.
Costume romance, “In the Moonlight” is scheduled to wrap up production in the early months of 2025. Its story involves an impoverished princess and a aging emperor who are forced into a marriage of convenience. Key crew and cast have not been disclosed.
Early 2026 will see the release of “A Journey to Glow,” a sequel to the company’s hit 2023-24 “A Journey to Love,” a costume drama featuring two assassins from rival agencies. It played on iQiyi within China and on both Viu and IQiyi in overseas territories.
In the contemporary register, Linmon used the TIFFCOM presentation to showcase “Under the Skin 2” a glossy and slightly fantastical series about a police detective and a portrait artist with unusual insights. Starring Tan Jianci and Jin Shijia, it will air from December.
The company explained that Chinese-language costume dramas remain in high demand and are increasingly attracting new sales and audiences in a growing number of international territories.
The growing international reach of the Chinese drama genre and Linmon’s policy of retaining ex-China rights for itself also mean that some of its older series can be reintroduced to the marketplace through Linmon International.
“We have never made so many costume drama shows as we are now doing,” a company spokesman said at the Tokyo presentation.
The company has previously said that it commits RMB4-6 million ($560,000 – $840,000) per episode to the shows in order to maximize on-screen production values. It compared the “Journey” series to HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” albeit with non-specific Chinese cultural elements and a higher number of episodes – as many as 40, when they hit a cap set out in regulations introduced three years ago.
Linmon International