A still photo from the hit TV series He Yi Sheng Xiao Mo. [Photo/people.com]

Facing fierce competition on both the small and big screens, producers and investors find great potential in TV and film adaptations of hot online fiction.

TV series He Yi Sheng Xiao Mo premiered on the Jiangsu Satellite Channel last week and took the lead in the ratings. It is an adaptation of romance fiction written by website writer Gu Man with the same title, firstly serialized on jjwxc.net (a literature website in mainland China) and published in 2007. It is not an accidental success.

The most searched keywords on Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, show that half of the highly-anticipated TV series are adaptations of online novels. By the end of 2014, copyrights to 114 online novels had been sold to film or TV production companies. Twenty-four of them will be turned into movies, 90 of them will be made into TV series, and the cost for each episode can be up to 5 million RMB.

According to a staff member at Shanda Literature, the largest online literature provider, the large number of fans attracted by online fiction will become potential viewers of the adaptations, for they are longing to see visualized versions of their favorite stories. For the same reason, the publicity of adaptations can easily get the most attention. With an eye-catching cast composed of popular TV or movie stars, an adaptation will soon become the most heated topic even before its release.