Liu Hao Ran Project Rumor Season: Sifting Through the Noise

We are getting closer and closer to the completion of filming for Novoland: Eagle Flag, which also means that rumors are really starting to pick up now in terms of what Liu Hao Ran's next project will be. C-ent is a complicated landscape to navigate when it comes to project rumors, because what you get is a weird blend of false+true rumors, and they're all leaked with specific goals in mind. 

Most likely we're not going to know what Liu Hao Ran's next project is until he actually starts filming - his team is notoriously good at keeping things quiet. But since we're hitting rumor season, it might be fun to look at how Liu Hao Ran's projects are decided upon, how the rumor cycle worked with his previous projects, and how to be able to tell if rumors are blatantly fake. I'll also share a couple of rumors circling that may not come true but are at least semi-believable, and some rumors from the past. 

Liu Hao Ran's Filmography

Liu Hao Ran doesn't have a lot on his filmography yet (as a main lead or important supporting role), but what's been impressive is the consistent quality of his projects. 

Just take a look at the Douban scores for the ones that he does have. (The Founding of An Army isn't on this list because Douban locked the score for it to avoid controversy.) 

For those who have not heard of Douban, it's essentially a social media website where you can rate books, dramas, films, and partake in discussion on a variety of topics. It's pretty much the Chinese audience's go-to reference for audience reviews on various media products and to share their thoughts - kind of like a blend of IMDb + Rotten Tomatoes + Metacritic (professional critics leave reviews on Douban as well). It's not a perfect system by any means, but because there are so many reviewers, the ratings are generally pretty fair and accurate. 

For reference, in general, 6.0+ is seen as good (enough) for films and 7.0+ for dramas.

The joke among netizens is that his main projects always get a 6.0 or higher on Douban, but the projects that he guest stars in are all 4.0 and under - but that's actually probably intentional on the part of his management team. Cameos and guest roles are usually done as a favor to someone on the production team, and Hao Ran has said before in interviews that his team does a great job of helping him reject "favor" projects (most likely they compromise by having Hao Ran guest star instead). 

Liu Hao Ran's name is starting to become synonymous with "no bad projects" both in terms of his performances and the projects that he picks, and that can be reflected by the number of followers he has on Douban. Someone did some digging into all of the popular stars' Douban followers recently, and Liu Hao Ran had the most among anyone under 40 - yes, that includes all of the popular folks, like Li Yi Feng, the TFBoys, the ex-EXO guys, Yang Yang, etc. as well as A-listers like Deng Chao, Liu Ye, and Huang Xiao Ming. He's even leading Hu Ge by about 400 followers. Clearly, this isn't fan-based. 

What does this prove then? Most of the registered users on Douban (not the subgroups, but Douban itself) are people who truly love cinema and dramas, and Liu Hao Ran has started to catch their attention because he hasn't had a misstep thus far in terms of project choices. 

I'll use my mom as an example - she actually isn't fond of watching Chinese dramas or films despite being Chinese herself because generally-speaking, the quality has been historically lacking. However, after we finished watching Twin Dragons together (she's watched pretty much everything else already), she remarked to me, "It's so weird - all of Hao Ran's projects have been watchable or even good. Remind me to check out Novoland: Eagle Flag when it comes out." 

And that is essentially why he has so many Douban followers - there are a lot of non-fans who are interested in checking out his next project because of his carefully built up reputation. 

The Project Selection Process

So that brings up the question: how has Liu Hao Ran been able to maintain this level of quality? 

In a C-ent industry that's so competitive that young actors often have to sacrifice quality for quantity, Hao Ran has had the luxury of being patient and focusing on school to improve his acting skills (he was pretty much MIA for most of 2015 and the first few months of 2016). This is largely due to the fact that he has Chen Si Cheng and the Detective Chinatown series, which guarantees him a place in the industry. 

Chen Si Cheng, for his part, has made Liu Hao Ran his redemption project of sorts. As someone who had a pretty difficult journey as an actor and in the entertainment industry, he has concluded that the #1 most important thing for an actor's career is to maintain the quality of his or her projects. As such, he has implemented a pretty strict system for Hao Ran's project decision process. 

(He's also personally responsible for like half of Hao Ran's filmography so that part's a bit up in the air, haha. Luckily, CSC has proved himself to be a pretty capable director/scriptwriter.) 

The first level of approval is Hao Ran's direct management team. They essentially serve as a preliminary filter for all the scripts that come in for Hao Ran (and there's a lot of them). Low quality dramas or dramas with unreliable production teams are immediately rejected. Hao Ran has also said in an interview before that his team will also reject lesser quality dramas offering high pay and projects where he's being asked to star as a favor for an industry connection on his behalf. 

Hao Ran then reads through all the scripts that have passed his management team and narrows it down to the ones that intrigue him. Needless to say, Liu Hao Ran is probably one of just a handful of actors under 30 who can be picky about his projects. 

Despite how busy he is and the fact that he's not involved with actor management, Chen Si Cheng is still very hands on when it comes to Hao Ran's career. He's said before that he'll sit down with Hao Ran to have an in-depth discussion when finalizing decisions. Hao Ran has to be able to successfully convince Chen Si Cheng on why he thinks the project will be beneficial for his growth as an actor in order for CSC to approve. CSC has also said before that he values the quality of the production team over anything else. 

And then the fourth and final approval comes from the Central Academy of Drama. Because filming often requires a leave of absence from school, Hao Ran's professors and the Dean have to personally sign off and approve the projects to see if it's worth missing school for. This is exactly what happened with Nirvana in Fire 2 - the filming period pretty much meant Hao Ran missed most of his sophomore year, but because of how highly regarded Kong Sheng and Daylight Entertainment are, the Dean was happy to let him go.

When Hao Ran graduates next year, he will no longer need to seek approval from the school, but it's likely that he'll still consult with his professors to get their opinions. 

When you have four different groups of people who have to sign off on a project - and everyone's on the same page in that they want the best for Liu Hao Ran's career as a whole, and not for him to just be a temporary flash in the pan - chances are you'll end up picking good ones. You can't guarantee how a drama or film will turn out, but in general when you go with a solid production team and a reliable script the end result will be decent. 

Of course, the precondition to all of this is that Liu Hao Ran is in the comfortable position where he has his pick of good projects. 

How were Liu Hao Ran's previous projects revealed? 

Aside from the four Chen Si Cheng projects, which everyone knew had Liu Hao Ran attached, and With You, which was very early on in his career, most of Liu Hao Ran's projects have remained under wraps until filming actually commences. 

Something to note - Chinese films normally do not announce casting decisions until filming is well underway. There have even been instances where the cast isn't officially announced until filming has wrapped up. 

For The Founding of An Army, C-fans did not realize Liu Hao Ran had been casted until actor Liu Ye posted a group picture on his Weibo (after filming had already commenced). Same for The Legend of the Demon Cat - people only knew he was going to be in the movie when someone spotted him on set after filming had already started. 

For dramas, it's a lot easier for leaks to come out because there are a lot more middlemen and third parties involved in the casting process. It was rumored that Liu Hao Ran would be starring in Nirvana in Fire 2 months before rumors about any of the other cast members leaked, and same goes for Novoland: Eagle Flag. Though there were a lot of people who were still skeptical up until the final announcement (age issues for the former, schedule issues for the latter), both of these ended up being true.

How do we distinguish between the blatantly fake rumors and the possibly reliable ones? What have been some past rumors? 

Liu Hao Ran's name gets attached to a lot of projects, but 90% will turn out to be inaccurate. It may not even be that they're fake - he's said himself that he gets a lot of scripts and offers. In fact, he's gotten so many screenplay offers recently that a couple of months ago, his company put up job postings specifically looking for people to help look through scripts. But a lot of these will be rejected and not even pass the first round of his company's approval process. 

Generally, though, it's pretty easy to tell from off the bat which ones have a chance of becoming true, and which do not. 

The following isn't absolute - just a good general-rule-of-thumb guide. 

Wuxia remakes 

Back in 2017, when the Novoland rumors were still ongoing, there was a rumor going around that Hao Ran was offered the role of Zhang Wu Ji in the remake of The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber (Joseph Zeng ended up taking this role and they actually just wrapped up about a month or so ago). 

When The Proud Twins/Handsome Siblings remake was announced, it was said that Wu Lei (for Xiao Yu Er) and Liu Hao Ran (for Hua Wu Que) were the initial invites. But in general, in the last few years, established young actors won't take on wuxia remakes because it's so hard to live up to expectations since there are so many good versions - it's a good launching pad for rookies, newer actors, or lesser known actors though. 

I won't lie though - I desperately want to see Hao Ran in a wuxia drama of some sort. 

Idol Dramas (Period/Modern)

There will be a day when Liu Hao Ran acts in an idol drama, even if his team is resistant now. I mean, he's not going to have a lot of options because he's so, so young and there just aren't a lot of great serious roles out there for his age. But it would have to be one that has a good script and production team. 

For those who might say "Wasn't With You an idol drama?", it's actually considered to be a youth school drama because it mainly focuses on growing up rather than romance.

Just to clarify - not saying at all that idol/romance dramas = bad and serious dramas = good because that is definitely not the case. It's just that China doesn't have a great track record with producing idol dramas, especially modern romances, so Hao Ran's team is understandably cautious about entering this genre. One of the major reasons why kdramas are so popular in China is because the Chinese drama industry itself hasn't quite been able to figure out how to produce good romance dramas on a consistent basis yet. 

Supporting Roles

It's not so much that Liu Hao Ran's company won't let him take supporting roles. It's that you have to know your market value. He'll play supporting roles in films with great directors where it's clearly an ensemble cast and features actors that are much more experienced/well known than him (The Founding of An Army, The Legend of the Demon Cat), but note that in both, he actually has a pretty prominent supporting role. This is an excellent example of what Chen Si Cheng means when he says that he has to be convinced that taking on the role will actually contribute to Hao Ran's growth. 

So if you see a rumor where he's listed in a supporting role that isn't all that important to the story, it's probably not true. Unless he's guest starring or making a cameo. 

Case in point: when it was first announced that Sandra Ma and Zhou Dong Yu's film Soulmate was getting a drama remake, there was an immediate rumor that Zhao Li Ying, Zheng Shuang, and Liu Hao Ran were going to star. Putting the two female leads aside (because that's unbelievable in itself), the male role in Soulmate is actually a very minor character, so that alone told netizens that Liu Hao Ran was probably not gonna be in it. This is the drama that Shen Yue and Chen Du Ling currently filming. 

Also, if it's a film, it's significantly more likely he'll be in a major supporting role than as the lead because of his age (I seriously want to fast forward in time just to see what kind of roles he can land in his mid to late 20s). The opposite is true for dramas - most of the time, he would be the lead, unless it was a situation like NiF2 where they had a big name guest star in a major role.

There's a rumor that we've been asked about recently from several people in regards to the drama adaptation of the novel "The Summer Where the Flowers Bloom" (rough translation) because of the Douban entry on it. The Douban entry lists Kong Sheng and Jian Chuan He as directors, and Hu Ge, Wang Zi Wen, Liu Hao Ran, and Liu Tao as the main cast (and supposedly Shen Yue, the new F4's Caesar Wu, and Yu He Wei in supporting roles). 

I don't dare to say that this is 100% fake, because there is always a tiny chance that it's not, but I'll go as far as to say I'm 99% sure this is made up. Firstly, because Kong Sheng doesn't choose projects like this (it's basically a romance melodrama). It's true that he did direct the first season of Ode to Joy, but I think that was more to help guide co-director Jian Chuan He, who took over for Season 2 and is also listed here as a co-director. 

Secondly, Hu Ge is moving away from his idol image and is only taking on projects that seriously interest him, especially in the film industry since he hasn't really made his way in there yet. And thirdly, because there is no reason for Liu Hao Ran to take a supporting role (because the main story will be on the lead couple) in this unless he feels like doing Daylight Entertainment a favor, which is always possible. The same would apply to Liu Tao. So this honestly looks like someone heard Daylight Entertainment was looking into buying the rights of producing the adaptation of this novel and decided to attach the names of four popular actors who've worked with Kong Sheng recently. 

If you go to the Douban page for this entry, all the comments are about how this is fake. And it barely got any traction on Weibo, though those who did pay attention to the rumor have all said how much they'd love to see a Hu Ge and Hao Ran collaboration (agreed!). 

Remakes of Beloved Works

I know what you're going to say - what about Novoland: Eagle Flag?! But that's precisely why people didn't believe the rumors at first (and it's also been said that Liu Hao Ran himself wavered about the decision to take the project). So again, this list isn't absolute. 

But in general, it is true. In February, there was an insider Weibo account that said Liu Hao Ran had signed contracts to star in the upcoming remake of Prince of Tennis. Anyone who's read the manga knows that he doesn't match the character of Ryoma (for one, Hao Ran is way too tall) at all, and it just doesn't seem like the type of project Hao Ran would take on, but the source was insistent that this was the case. However, the same account later said Hao Ran would actually just be making a guest appearance. And then a month after that, apparently the production team couldn't find a suitable role for Hao Ran so the deal completely died. So proof that not all rumors are necessarily false, but we just might not have the complete picture. 

When the Hikaru no Go adaptation was announced a couple of months ago, Liu Hao Ran and Song Wei Long were apparently the first names on the invite list - both have passed on the project. 

What other projects have had Liu Hao Ran's name attached to them? 

The film Double World (Zheng Tu) was leaking Liu Hao Ran's name for several months before it was announced recently that Peter Ho and Henry Lau would be starring. I love both, but this movie is being produced by Alibaba Films, which has had a string of misses, including the recent unfortunate Asura and Once Upon A Time, the film version of Eternal Love. Which is why most people didn't believe this rumor to be true.

The most interesting past rumor is the upcoming Martial Universe. In June 2016, rumors broke out that Liu Hao Ran was going to be starring in highly acclaimed director Zhang Li's adaptation of the novel. He kind of fueled the fire unintentionally as well as he revealed in an interview that he was preparing for his very first role in ancient costume (it turned out he was talking about The Legend of the Demon Cat though, which everyone was in the dark about at the time). This was also when the first Nirvana in Fire 2 rumors began. If he was offered both roles, he clearly decided to take Daylight Entertainment's offer instead. 

Director Zhang Li also pretty much admitted himself that he was in contact with Hao Ran for the drama. This is what he said in an interview in December 2016 when he was asked about the fact that he likes to use actors that he's familiar with, and why he ended up going with Yang Yang. "I actually don't know many little fresh meats, but I've had conversations with Yang Yang, Zhang Yi Xing, and Liu Hao Ran. They each have their own unique characteristics and are hard workers, but due to different factors, like investors, schedules, and other reasons, we ended up going with Yang Yang. Of course, I also recommended the other kids for good projects that I think will suit them well." 

C-netz seem to think this means that Hao Ran chose NiF2 over Martial Universe, and effectively Kong Sheng (and Daylight Entertainment) over Zhang Li, but the other possibility is that Zhang Li recommended Hao Ran for Nirvana in Fire 2 (though it seems unlikely because the rumors were basically going on simultaneously). 

That was one of those rumors that did fall under the "believable" category at the time - because while Zhang Li isn't quite as proven as Kong Sheng & co are, he's one of the best directors in dramaland. 

Just to be clear, this is not meant to say that Yang Yang was a back up plan by any means.  For starters, Hao Ran would have been considerably more affordable then, but Yang Yang was more well known. Just as all things in life, everyone ended up on the road that they were meant to be on. 

What are the semi-believable rumors out there right now for Liu Hao Ran?

There isn't a whole lot, and most likely none of these will end up coming true and Liu Hao Ran's next project will just drop out of the sky, haha. But here's what's floating around for those who are curious. 

1) A Han Han (best selling author, China's most popular blogger, director of The Continent and Duckweed) directed film. The problem is - we don't actually know which one. Han Han has three films that he's filed initial production documents for, and Hao Ran's name has come up for all three of them. Which seems to indicate that Hao Ran's team has had talks for one of those films, but they've done a good job of hiding which one. 

There's a rumor that's been around since 2016 that Han Han wants Liu Hao Ran to star in a film adaptation of his debut hit novel, Triple Door. The issue is that the story is about a middle schooler (though they would probably raise the age to high school for the film), and Hao Ran may be too old for that kind of role by the time they actually get around to filming this. 

Han Han also openly complimented Liu Hao Ran in a Weibo post on Detective Chinatown 2 during Chinese New Year's this year, which is extremely rare for him, and one of the major reasons why the rumors have started picking up. 

Han Han is about to start filming his new film "Fei Chi Ren Sheng" (no official English title yet), which is about an older race car driver who is trying to redeem himself. While one of the "insider" accounts said months ago Daniel Wu and Liu Hao Ran would be starring, all indications are that filming is about to begin for this film and Hao Ran is still stuck on the set of Novoland: Eagle Flag.

If you're curious, Johnny Huang Jing Yu is the name leaked in the last couple of days to play the younger race car driver for this film.

Most likely, this is a long term relationship - meaning that somewhere down the road Liu Hao Ran will work with Han Han, but not now. Keep an eye on this. Something tells me this collaboration will eventually happen. 

2) Guest role as Yang Jian/Erlang Shen in director Wuershan (The Painted Skin II, Mojin: The Lost Legend)'s upcoming film Feng Shen Trilogy, which will be a film covering the gods, heroes, and demons of China's mythology. The film will be using four rookie actors, which is why they are intent on getting an all star supporting cast. Chen Kun and Huang Bo (who have previously starred in Wuershan's films) are also said to have guest roles. This rumor has been around since January 2018 and has recently picked up again. 

3) I've actually only seen this rumor once, but that kind of makes it more believable because it was oddly specific and there really isn't any point in starting rumors about guest roles. A couple of months ago, someone said on an online forum that Liu Hao Ran was in talks to guest on Zhang Li's upcoming historical epic drama Cao Cao, which will mark Chinese superstar actor/director Jiang Wen's return to dramaland, as one of Cao Cao's sons. This is somewhat believable because epic historicals do like to use cameos/guest stars, and obviously Zhang Li knows Liu Hao Ran, but since this drama seems to be a ways away from filming, who knows if Hao Ran's schedule will work out then. 

Something to keep in mind: projects are usually planned out months in advance. Consider that both NiF2 and Novoland: Eagle Flag had his name rumored four to seven months before filming started, and that Hao Ran was already prepping (dieting) for The Legend of the Demon Cat in March 2016 when filming didn't start until August. The fact that we don't hear anything right now doesn't mean that nothing's set. Most likely, Hao Ran's already decided on his next project and they're just keeping a tight lid on it. 

And that's about it! When Hao Ran starts his post-Novoland vacation, we'll probably starting hearing more buzz. If anything starts to surface as being pretty believable, we'll be sure to update!