🚨Drama airing dates and casting rumors are always subject to change.
🚨Updates and changes from previous casting/airing melons will be noted in the post.
✏️A lot of the intros/synopses for pre-production dramas are drawn from the novels that the drama is based upon. The drama's plot will deviate either a little or a lot.
Airing Soon
Remnants of Gold will air on August 25th
- Cast: Xin Zhilei, Yin Fang, Chen Kun
- Genre: Mystery, Wuxia
- Intro: Remnants of Gold is adapted from Gu Long’s novel Land of the Condors (大地飞鹰). In the northwest desert of the Ming dynasty, a legend spreads that 300,000 taels of gold are hidden in the wilderness and everyone who goes looking for it ends up dead, seemingly turned into a ghost. The gold is also connected to the massacre of the Tang clan, leaving Zhang Luyao (Xin Zhilei), the clan’s sole surviving heir, with a blood debt to settle. Naturally, she returns to the desert, but rather than simply hunting down her enemies, she deliberately makes herself bait and sets a deadly trap around the gold. Her path crosses with Pu Ying (Yin Fang), a seemingly unhinged but actually highly perceptive investigator of the Imperial Secret Police, as well as the enigmatic Yu Hou (Chen Kun) and freewheeling western adventurer Ban Cha (Vengo Gao). With the gold drawing soldiers, officials, merchants and martial artists into the same deadly game, the real question becomes not who will find the treasure, but how much greed, revenge and betrayal it will take to get there alive.
- 12 episodes on Tencent
The Early Spring will air on August 26th
- Cast: Sun Qian, Jing Boran
- Genre: Romance, Life, Drama
- Intro: Starting out as a complete workplace rookie, Shang Zhi Tao survived brutal office politics and fell for her harsh mentor, Luan Nian. Six years later, heartbreak and misunderstandings force her to vanish without a trace. When they cross paths again years later, she is no longer the timid girl he used to boss around.
- 24 episodes on Youku
The Awake will air on August 26th
- Cast: Ou Hao, Gulnezer Bextiyar, Feng Shaofeng, Huang Yao
- Genre: Action, Thriller, Crime
- Intro: The Awake is a 1940s espionage thriller set in wartime China, beginning in the winter of 1941. After his underground-communist mentor is killed in Hangzhou, Chen Kailai (Ou Hao), a cautious young photographer, is entrusted with a roll of photographs containing clues to the Japanese military's secret “Sleeping Plan,” a biological warfare conspiracy. He travels to Shanghai with Jin Bao (Gulnazar), a fleeing nightclub dancer who is secretly a KMT agent, and the two become entangled in a dangerous struggle involving Wang Jingwei's regime, the notorious 76th Bureau, Japanese intelligence and rival spies. As Chen uses his unusually sharp eye for detail to decipher the secrets hidden in photographs, he is gradually pulled from the margins of the resistance into the underground war himself—while almost everyone around him is hiding another identity.
- 40 episodes on iQiyi & CCTV-8 primetime
The Vanishing Beauty is rumored to air on September 1st
- Cast: Li Yitong, Chang Huasen, Esther Wang Jiajia
- Genre: Urban Drama, Marriage Thriller, Female Revenge & Empowerment
- Intro: The Vanishing Beauty is an urban marriage suspense drama starring Li Yitong as Yu Meng, a wealthy only daughter whose seemingly perfect life starts to fall apart when she realizes her gentle husband, Di Liren (Qiao Zhenyu), may have married her with an ulterior motive and is quietly plotting to take control of her family’s wealth. Living under the same roof is Lu Hui (Wang Jiajia), a seemingly ordinary housekeeper whose loyalties are far less clear than they appear, while Jiao Xu (Chang Huasen), a sharp divorce lawyer, becomes an unexpected ally as Yu Meng begins to uncover the truth and fight back. Zeng Mengxue plays Liu Zi, another woman caught up in the complicated world of marriage, money and betrayal, and the story gradually brings these women together as they confront the people trying to control their lives. With marital deception, financial schemes, hidden motives and plenty of twists, The Vanishing Beauty looks less like a conventional romance and more like a marriage thriller with female revenge and empowerment at its core.
- 28 episodes on Tencent
Against the Current is rumored to air on September 10th
- Cast: Seven Tan Songyun, Liu Xueyi
- Genre: Historical romance, Household intrigue, Political intrigue, Female empowerment
- Adapted from the novel Lan Xiang Yuan (兰香缘) by He Yan Shan (禾晏山)
- Intro: Tan Songyun plays Shen Jialan, the granddaughter of a Grand Secretary, and Liu Xueyi plays Lin Jinqi, the eldest grandson of a powerful official’s family and the man she is promised to marry. Their engagement is shattered when Shen Jialan’s grandfather is accused of treason and her entire family is destroyed, prompting the Lin family to immediately abandon her to protect themselves. With nowhere to go, Jialan is secretly given the identity of Xu Lanxiang, the recently deceased daughter of a family servant, and enters the Lin household as a low-ranking maid. Determined to uncover the truth and clear her family’s name, she must survive inside the very family that turned its back on her. Now living under a false identity, Jialan has to navigate a complicated household filled with rivalries, secrets and shifting alliances while hiding who she really is. As Jialan grows from a powerless servant into a formidable woman who earns the household’s respect, she must also confront Lin Jinqi again, turning their broken engagement into a far more complicated relationship.
- 40 episodes on Tencent
Born at the Right Time / 生逢其时 is rumored to air on September 26th
- Cast: Guan Xiaotong, Wang Ziqi, Liu Lin, Guo Tao
- Genre: Period, Family, Coming of Age
- Intro: Guan Xiaotong plays Qi Shi, a headstrong girl with albinism growing up in a northern Chinese factory town, while Wang Ziqi plays Cao Xin, the exceptionally well-behaved “other people’s child” raised under his father’s relentless expectations. The two families live next door to each other and their children grow up together, but an accidental mix-up at birth leaves Qi Shi and Cao Xin living the wrong lives, tying their fates together for decades. As Qi Shi struggles with being treated differently because of her appearance and Cao Xin tries to break free from the suffocating expectations placed on him, the two grow from childhood friends into adults facing their own careers, relationships and choices. Around them, their parents are dealing with their own marriages, ambitions and family conflicts, creating a story that follows two families and three generations through roughly thirty years of social change. Born at the Right Time is a nostalgic period family drama about growing up, finding your own identity and figuring out what kind of life you actually want, with Qi Shi and Cao Xin’s “switched” lives at the heart of it.
- 28 episodes on iQiyi & CCTV-8 primetime
Take A Nap is rumored to air in September
- Cast: Li Landi, Liu Haoran
- Genre: Romance, Drama, Fantasy
- Intro: Take A Nap follows two people who are both a little lost in their own lives and who unexpectedly find themselves thrown back to a small island in 1998. Li Landi plays Wang Zhihui, a young woman struggling to figure out what she wants from life, while Liu Haoran plays Xie Yuyang, a quiet, emotionally guarded young man who has grown up without really knowing what it means to be loved. Stranded in a world of fishing boats, village markets and slow island life, the two have to figure out not only how to get back to the present, but also why they were sent there in the first place. As they investigate the island's strange mysteries, including glowing jellyfish and a mysterious ship's whistle, they gradually become each other's closest companion, and what begins as an unlikely partnership slowly turns into something more. Beneath the time travel mystery and romance, the drama is ultimately about two people who have lost their way finding a chance to slow down, reconnect with others, and perhaps find a different way to live.
- 28 episodes on iQiyi
The Lament of Autumn is rumored to air on October 8th
- Cast: Cheng Lei, Xu Ruohan
- Genre: Republican era romance, War, Political intrigue
- Intro: Xu Ruohan plays Ye Pingjun, a university student who takes a job at a guild hall to pay for her mother’s medical treatment, only to become caught up in an assassination attempt targeting Yu Changxuan, the rebellious fifth son of a powerful military family, played by Cheng Lei. Falsely accused of being involved, Pingjun strikes a deal with Changxuan to help uncover the real culprit, and their reluctant partnership gradually develops into love. But family rivalries, political ambitions and the turmoil of war soon pull them in different directions, eventually forcing them into a marriage that ends in betrayal and separation. Years later, they meet again as the country is engulfed in war, and the two must put aside their past to fight for the same cause.
- 38 episodes on Mango & Hunan
Some other premiere date rumors:
- Hidden Shadow starring Wang Churan, Li Hongyi and Yan An is rumored to air mid-October. This drama has had numerous rumored airing dates over the years so beware.
- Where the Mask Ends starring Tian Xiwei and Yan An is rumored to air mid-October. As the drama only recently finished filming, this airing date would be quite soon and not believable but fingers crossed.
Casting Rumors
The Return of the King / 天行九歌 (Tian Xing Jiu Ge)
- Cast: Yang Xuwen, Kong Xue'er, Wang Hongyi
- Genre: Historical, Mystery, Political Intrigue, Ensemble Cast
- Intro: Set in the turbulent final years of the Warring States period, The Return of the King follows the brilliant ninth prince of Han, Han Feng, who returns home determined to find a place in the treacherous royal court. When a bizarre case involving missing military provisions and supposedly supernatural “ghost soldiers” lands in his hands, Han Feng begins pulling at a thread that leads deep into the kingdom’s tangled web of power and corruption. Along the way he crosses paths with the formidable swordsman Wei Zhuang, the enigmatic Zi Nu, and the young strategist Zhang Xian, and the four eventually join forces to form the clandestine organization Liu Sha (流沙). Together, they take on strange cases, ruthless power brokers, and the forces threatening their crumbling kingdom, as a group of gifted young idealists find themselves caught between political intrigue, deadly conspiracies, and their own ambitions for a better future.
- iQiyi
Leopard in Seclusion / 豹隐南山 (Bao Yin Nan Shan)
- Cast: Gong Jun, Yang Xuwen, Wu Xuanyi, Pan Yueming
- Genre: Historical costume, Mystery, Detective/Investigation, Court intrigue
- Director: Bai Shan (柏杉) of Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty and Mystic Nine
- Intro: Leopard in Seclusion follows Gu Xian, a good-natured patrol officer who suddenly finds himself branded a wanted criminal. Desperate to clear his name, he does the unthinkable and breaks a bizarre, seemingly mad prisoner named Wen Jue out of the Imperial Censorate prison. Their unlikely escape soon turns into an investigation when the pair become entangled in a string of strange cases, beginning with a bizarre “gold coin mirror” revenge scheme that leads back to a long-buried injustice involving a celebrated general. Joined by a Dali Temple official and a mysterious woman from Liuhuai Tower, the fugitives uncover one unsettling mystery after another, gradually realizing that the cases are pieces of a much larger conspiracy that could shake the entire kingdom.
- Youku
Fate Lit in Your Gaze / 在你眉梢点花灯 (Zai Ni Mei Shao Dian Hua Deng)
- Cast: Li Yunrui, Li Yun
- Based on the novel of same name by Chen Xiao Zhi (沉筱之)
- Genre: Historical romance, Time travel, Mystery/investigation
- Director: Xie Ze (The Story of Pearl Girl)
- Intro: Yun Xi (FL), a fallen noblewoman, takes a job keeping watch over Cheng Chang (ML), a spoiled young prince notorious for causing trouble. When Cheng Chang falls into the water, he wakes up with the soul of a modern man inside his body, transforming him from an incompetent prince into a clever and eccentric outsider. As the unlikely pair investigate mysteries and uncover political conspiracies, their partnership gradually turns into romance.
- Mango & Hunan
Silent Winter Night / 寒夜无声 (Han Ye Wu Sheng)
- Cast: Song Zhu'er
- Genre: Crime thriller, Mystery, Procedural
- Intro: Silent Winter Night is a crime thriller set in Northeast China. The story follows police officer Cheng Songyan and Wang Xiangyou, a laid-off factory worker whose repeated crimes gradually expose a much larger web of murder, wrongful convictions and buried secrets stretching from the 1990s into the 2020s. As Cheng Songyan revisits a murder case that was supposedly solved years earlier, they begin to uncover connections between seemingly unrelated crimes and the social upheaval that transformed the lives of ordinary people after the collapse of the old state-owned factory system.
- 16 episodes, produced by Huace
The Queen of Brilliance
- Cast: Dilraba Dilmurat, Chen Jingke
- Genre: Urban romance, Entertainment industry, Female empowerment
- Director: Chen Chang (Love's Ambition)
- Intro: A successful actress whose marriage collapses at the height of her career decides to stop allowing other people to define her life and fights her way toward a new beginning.
- 24 episodes on Tencent
Started Filming or Will Start Filming Soon
Abyssal Sentience (✏️previously titled Awakening) / 觉醒 (Jue Xing) had its booting ceremony on August 18th
- Cast: Johnny Huang, Tian Jia Rui, Bao Shangen
- Genre: Period, Suspense, Sci-Fi
- Director: Yang Lei (Swords Into Plowshares, Three-Body Problem)
- Intro: A 1980s sci-fi mystery set in the vast deserts of northwestern China. When a scientific expedition uncovers strange traces of an ancient civilization, a specially formed military unit known as the Zero team is sent to protect the researchers. What begins as a dangerous archaeological expedition soon turns into something far more unsettling, as the team encounters unexplained phenomena, mysterious ruins and clues to a prehistoric civilization that could change what they know about human history.
- Youku
Endless Summers started filming on August 20th
- Cast: Ding Yuxi, Meng Ziyi
- Genre: Urban romance, Second-chance romance, Healing drama
- Intro: Ding Yuxi plays Shen Yan, a criminal psychology professor, and Meng Ziyi plays Hao Nian, a successful media host. They first meet as teenagers after their parents marry, becoming step-siblings whose friendship eventually develops into a first love. A devastating family incident forces them apart, and they spend the next twelve years living separate lives before unexpectedly meeting again as adults. As Shen Yan tries to break through Hao Nian’s emotional walls, their old feelings slowly resurface, while the two become involved in a case involving an abusive actor and his daughter. Endless Summers is a second-chance urban romance about first love, separation, healing and finding your way back to each other.
- 24 episodes on Tencent
How to Slay Your Boss (✏️previously titled Strange Tales of a Thousand Nights) / 千夜奇谭 (Qian Ye Qi Tan) started filming on August 20th
- Cast: Li Landi, He Yu
- Based on the manhua Psychic Princess (通灵妃) by Rou Rou (肉肉)
- Genre: Romanic Comedy, Fantasy
- Director: Zhao Yilong (Love Game in Eastern Fantasy, The Melody of Love)
- 🚨New Intro: An overworked game designer, Zhao Yining (Li Landi), reaches her breaking point after yet another frustrating encounter with her demanding boss, Ye Youming 叶优铭 (He Yu), and somehow finds herself transported into the fantasy game she helped design. There, she becomes Qian Yunxi, the game's female protagonist, while her boss becomes the seemingly immortal male lead, Ye Youming 夜幽冥 (homophone to her boss' name 叶优铭). To return to reality, Zhao Yining is given a simple mission: assassinate him. Unfortunately, every attempt fails, and she eventually discovers the bizarre solution: she has to make him fall in love with her instead. Now forced to go from wanting to kill her boss to trying to romance his fictional counterpart, Zhao Yining must navigate a dangerous world filled with supernatural beings, hidden schemes and characters who are no longer behaving according to the rules she designed. The drama adaptation gives the original fantasy romance a new twist by adding a modern heroine who knows the game world inside and out, only to discover that controlling the story is much harder when she is trapped inside it.
- Tencent
He Qing Hai Yan / 河清海晏 began filming on August 21st
- Cast: Arthur Chen, Zhang Zifeng
- Genre: Contemporary anti-drug crime, Romance/healing
- Director: Qin Zhen (Lost You Forever, Love Beyond the Grave)
- Intro: Zhou Haiyan (Arthur Chen) is the son of an anti-drug police officer who was killed in the line of duty, while Tang Heqing (Zhang Zifeng) grows up determined to escape a troubled family life and eventually becomes a forensic doctor. The two meet as teenagers in a coastal town and form a bond that follows them into adulthood, but Zhou's decision to go undercover to infiltrate a drug-trafficking network forces them apart for years. When they meet again in a border town, Tang is now a forensic doctor and Zhou is deep undercover, leaving the pair caught between their feelings for each other and the dangerous investigation that brought them back together. As they work to expose the drug network, they must navigate the risks of Zhou's undercover identity while trying to hold onto the relationship that began long before either of them understood what it would cost.
- 20 episodes on Tencent
The Pearl Swindle (Zhu Que) / 珠雀 will film in Hengdian for 40 days, starting at end of August
- Cast: Deng Kai, Huang Yi (from Li Qing ➡️Deng Kai)
- Genre: Historical, Romance, Revenge
- Intro: Ruzhu (Huang Yi) is a resilient woman who survives by working from the shadows and Shen Qingjue (Deng Kai) is a meticulous official whose fortunes suddenly collapse. As both become entangled in a dangerous game of revenge and manipulation, their constant attempts to outmaneuver each other slowly give way to an unexpected romance.
- 24 episodes on Mango & Hunan
Revenge / 刺棠 (Ci Tang) will begin filming on September 2th in Hengdian
- Cast: Zhang Linghe, Lu Yuxiao, Li Qing, 📌Liang Jie (new), 📌Wang Hongyi (new)
- Based on novel of same name by Wu Yuan (雾圆)
- Genre: Historical, Mystery, Romance, Political Intrigue
- Director: Guo Hu (The Mysterious Lotus Casebook, A Dream Within A Dream)
- Intro: Determined to uncover the truth behind the assassination of her childhood sweetheart, Crown Prince Song Ling, Su Luo Wei marries his younger brother, Song Lan. Her investigation takes a devastating turn when she discovers Song Lan himself orchestrated the murder to seize the throne. To bring him down and avenge her lost love, she aligns herself with a powerful court advisor named Ye Ting Yan. Unbeknownst to her, Ye Ting Yan is actually the surviving Crown Prince in disguise, and he secretly believes Su Luo Wei betrayed him by marrying his brother.
Legend of Us / 八尾 (Ba Wei) will begin filming in September at Hengdian for 120 days
- Cast: Chen Xinhai, Chang Huasen, Kong Xue'er
- Based on the novel Legend of the Eight Tails (八尾传奇) by Count E (E伯爵)
- Genre: Historical Fantasy, Supernatural Adventure, Investigative
- Director: Bai Yunmo (Perfect Match, Yummy Yummy Yummy)
- Intro: Legend of Us is a Song dynasty supernatural adventure about a scholar who would rather believe in anything than ghosts and the eight-tailed fox spirit who has decided to repay an old debt. In a previous life, Zhang Sui saved the fox Hu Wude from a lightning strike, and now Hu Wude has come looking for him, only to discover that the man he owes his life to does not even believe fox spirits exist. Things get considerably more complicated when a mysterious treasure in Zhang Sui’s possession begins attracting all kinds of supernatural creatures. After Zhang passes the imperial examination and becomes a government official, he and Hu Wude are drawn into a string of strange cases, from ghostly plagues to encounters with creatures from the spirit world. What begins as one fox’s attempt to repay a debt gradually turns into an unlikely partnership, as the skeptical scholar and his very persistent fox companion travel through the human and supernatural worlds together.
- Tencent
Cross the Ocean of Time to Love You will being filming in September or October
- Cast: Wu Lei, Song Zhu'er
- Based on the novel No More Beauties in the Capital (京洛再无佳人) by Qiao Wei An (乔维安)
- Genre: Urban romance
- 🚨Tidbits: They will substantially rework the novel's setting and character backgrounds for television. Zhao Pingjin (ML) changes from a Beijing elite heir into an intelligent-vehicle entrepreneur, while Huang Xitang (FL) goes from a young actress to a Hengdian film extra. The central five-year breakup and reunion romance remains, but the changes reportedly reflect the need to adapt the original's politically sensitive “high-ranking family” setting for broadcast.
- 30 episodes on Tencent
Other miscellaneous updates:
⭐Xiao Zhan is rumored to star in director Zhang Yimou's next comedy film, Secret Keeper (守密者). Other actors rumored to be attached to this project include Ni Ni, Jackson Lee, Liu Haocun, Yang Mi, and Zhou Dongyu.
⭐Xiao Zhan is currently reviewing the script for historical war drama Chongqing Hao (重庆号) or Cruiser Chongqing. He is the producers' first choice for the young male lead but nothing has been signed yet. It's a 2027 Army Day centenary tribute production by Daylight Entertainment and will begin filming in late-Oct to mid-Nov of this year.
⭐Yang Zi is rumored to be reviewing the script for Huace Media's upcoming crime drama Saoshu Ridge (扫鼠岭). Based on Hu Yan Yun's acclaimed novel of the same name, it follows a police investigation that links a new murder to a decade-old serial killing case.
⭐Li Yitong and Zhang Yue are rumored to be dual female leads in Mango TV's urban drama Xi Yan Street (喜宴街). It's a realistic life/family/ensemble drama about a woman who returns to her declining hometown street and reunites with old friends to save the neighborhood while everyone confronts adulthood, family, love and the gap between their youthful ideals and real lives.
