Pearl River Film Launches Studio With Author Guo Ni, Sets Eight-Franchise Slate
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- Pearl River Film and Media joined with Black Body Interactive and Meng Guo Ji Media to launch a dedicated studio with Chinese author Guo Ni, committing to adapt eight of her youth and sci-fi franchises for the screen.
- "Dreamship" — an animated feature adapted from a novel that has sold more than five million copies — is slated for Chinese theatrical release on June 27, with a "Us" music video performed by Chinese idol group Teens in Times already released as a preview.
- Seven additional Guo Ni titles — "Angel Street No. 23," "Lady's Revolution," "Adooraki," "Time Spaceship," "Animal Space Agency," "Wan Zi Deng" and "Chang'e" — round out the slate, with "Angel Street No. 23" also in preliminary talks for a live-action series adaptation.
- Baidu AI Cloud signed on as the production technology partner, which Guo Ni framed as giving AI imaging and cloud computing a role as "wings for human imagination, rather than tools that replace creative inspiration."
- Guo Ni, who published debut "Lady's Revolution" in 2006 and ranked in the top six on China's writers' rich list by 2008, has been one of China's most enduring bestselling authors, expanding into sci-fi children's fiction in 2017.
- Wang Xi, chair of the state-owned Guangdong-based Pearl River Film, called the launch a "key milestone" in franchise development; the studio previously used a similar literary-adaptation approach for its 2019 animated feature "White Snake."
Why it matters: Pearl River Film, a state-owned Guangdong studio, is committing industrial-scale resources to YA/sci-fi franchise IP with eight simultaneous adaptations — a pipeline heavy enough to reshape China's youth-oriented theatrical slate. Embedding Baidu AI Cloud as production technology partner, and Guo's explicit framing of AI as creative catalyst rather than replacement, signals a deliberate positioning of the studio at the intersection of state-backed content strategy and China's AI-cloud ambitions.
