#kaiserpenguin

You want my wild guess? Nearly every product released by Shanda as part of the DN IP has been cheap, with ridiculously low production values. The manhua was poorly drawn and used screenshots, traced fanart and 3D models in several pages, the mobile games barely work, the Green Dragon Shorts, the animation episode 2 being a complete disaster.

I think Shanda reached Mili Pictures because they were a completely new studio and were making the DN movie in a really tight budget. Mili has a higher profile now. I don’t know what other investors and sponsors Mili got besides Enlight Media but suddenly the second movie has way higher production values than the first movie and they got into mahua publishing and VR bussiness, expanded their offices, oppened new ones and hired more staff.

Bigger portfolio, more staff and more demand means prices rise. Shanda was probably expecting Mili to keep doing movies for cheap. Shanda has lost quite a lot of money in failed projects like FFXIV, FFXIV: ARR and Borderlands Online. It’s been known for years that Shanda has been going through difficult times which forced them to restructure in 2015.

This article sounds really shaddy, like if it’s trying to fish amateurs with the old trick of “this is such a huge opportunity to have your work seen by others!!” because no studio that takes themselves seriously would work for Shanda after seeing the weird treatment they gave to Mili Pictures. Mili Pictures and other 12 animation studios are now under the Enlight Media Coloroom Pictures brand and I doubt any of those will take the bait.