LayarHijau – Rising star Zhou Ye, known for her roles in Scent of Time (为有暗香来) and Love Me, Love My Voice (很想很想你), teams up with Cheng Lei in the costume drama Legend of The Female General (锦月如歌), now streaming on Tencent and MangoTV. The series premiered with impressive ratings, topping charts on both platforms, each featuring four commercial breaks—a strong sign of early success.
Adapted from Qianshan Chake’s novel Rebirth of the Female General Star (重生之女将星), the drama’s broadcast hit a major roadblock due to legal issues involving Li Mingde, the actor playing the third male lead, Cheng Lisu. In February, Li Mingde was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison for damaging someone else’s car while intoxicated and refusing to compensate the victim. Labeled a disgraced artist by Chinese authorities, all his projects have been banned from airing.
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In response, the production team acted swiftly by enlisting Li Qing, an actor from A Dream Within A Dream (书卷一梦), to digitally replace Li Mingde’s face using advanced AI technology. The process involved dynamic skeletal matching and micro-expression capture, costing over 6 million yuan (around 13.7 billion IDR), and was completed within 72 hours. However, the result drew heavy criticism from netizens who pointed out the awkwardness caused by Li Qing’s shorter stature compared to Li Mingde’s 183 cm height—resulting in unnatural neck joins. Many joked that the AI face swap looked more like a “wax statue.”
The controversy deepened as Cheng Lisu’s character in the drama was significantly altered from the original novel. The TV adaptation merged two other characters, Lin Shuanghe and He Yunsheng, into Cheng Lisu. Moreover, his relationship with Song Taotao (played by Zhang Miaoyi), which was originally a playful “will-they-won’t-they” dynamic in the novel, was rewritten as a marriage, sparking backlash from devoted fans accusing the production of excessive plot tampering.
AI face replacement is no stranger to China’s drama industry. Earlier, the drama The Journey of Legend (赴山海), starring Cheng Yi, faced a similar predicament when its second female lead Li Kaixin became embroiled in a political scandal. Her role was replaced by another actress from Unparalleled Love (念无双) using AI. Many worry that if the AI effects continue to appear unnatural—as seen in Legend of The Female General—it could dampen viewer enthusiasm and impact ratings.
Source: Upmedia
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