China Post Securities: The AI drama enters the mainstream, and supply policy and technology resonate to open up industry space

The Zhitong Finance App learned that China Post Securities released a research report stating that the first domestic AIGC long drama was released on TV's gold list. The bank believes that “Journey to the West” marks the transition of AI film and television from testing short films and short dramas to a stage of industrialized verification of long-form narratives, professional production, and broadcast on mainstream channels. Seedance pushes AI into industrial verification, and reusable digital assets are expected to restructure production costs. The combination of policy and technology is expected to drive seasonal dramas and series from one-time delivery to small-batch launching—feedback—subsequent iteration, shortening the IP development cycle, improving production companies' capital turnover, and increasing content hit rates.

The main views of China Post Securities are as follows:

Incidents

The first domestic AIGC long drama appeared on TV Gold. On August 31, the AIGC long drama “Journey to the West” produced by Mango TV went live on Mango TV and landed on Hunan TV's gold list, becoming the first AIGC long drama in China to land on TV's gold category. The series is supported by ByteDance Seedance 2.0 and Seedance 2.5, and content production is organized through Mango TV's self-developed platform “Mango Spirit Creation”. Currently, the project has accumulated 109 character assets and 143 scene assets, and uses a production model while producing, reviewing, and broadcasting.

Seedance pushes AI into industrial verification, and reusable digital assets are expected to restructure production costs

Long dramas need to maintain the consistency of characters, scenes, movements, and emotional expressions within hundreds of minutes, and place higher demands on the controllability of AI generation and collaboration throughout the process. “Journey to the West” is supported by Seedance 2.0 and Seedance 2.5. The project then uniformly manages character settings, scene assets, and production processes through “Mango Spirituality”. The main creator and AI production team completed splitting design, batch generation, lens screening, partial modification, and film editing. The bank believes that the core efficiency of AI is not simply to replace actors, but rather to improve the efficiency of split preview and visual production, reduce repetitive generation through reference control, reduce traditional rework and rework costs through partial rework, and deposit characters, scenes, and props into reusable digital assets. As the asset library continues to expand, marginal production costs for subsequent series, sequels, extras, and derivative content are expected to decline, the film and television viability of mythology, sci-fi, and mid-tier IPs is expected to increase, and industrial value will also be further concentrated on high-quality IP, creative aesthetics, digital asset management, and distribution channels.

“21 Rules for Radio and Television” improves content supply, and AI production resonates with border review and broadcast

The “21 Rules of Radio and Television” focuses on optimizing management of the number of TV series episodes, seasonal broadcast intervals, content review, broadcast arrangements, and copyright protection, and tests broadcast while reviewing and revising some types of dramas. In the first half of 2026, Star Channel premiered 61 primetime dramas, an increase of 10.9% over the previous year, and the supply of new dramas has improved. Traditional long dramas are expensive to revise after filming is completed, and AI can regenerate some characters, scenes, and footage, and is highly adaptable to batch production and batch review mechanisms. The bank believes that the combination of policy and technology is expected to drive seasonal dramas and series from one-time delivery to small-batch launching—feedback—subsequent iteration, shortening the IP development cycle, improving production companies' capital turnover, and increasing the content hit rate.

Risk warning:

The word-of-mouth and commercial performance of AI long dramas fell short of expectations, improved video model capabilities fell short of expectations, AI short drama user growth and payment performance fell short of expectations, etc.