The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

Heaven Official’s Blessing (天官赐福) is an upcoming ancient drama adapted from the novel written by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (The Untamed). Our two male leads have quite the history. The story begins 800 years ago, one of our male leads is a beloved Crown Prince from Xian Le kingdom who has a grand wish of helping the common people. A child prodigy, he’s given a chance to ascend heaven at age 17, but is unfortunately demoted back to the mortal realm due to some unforeseen circumstances (bad decision, good intentions). He never gives up, that is his saving grace trait. Though he lives in poverty and has to work every job possible, he perseveres for his belief in helping people. He’s once again allowed back to Heaven, just to be banished a moment later (lol, this poor kid). 800 Years later, he’s given another chance to ascend heaven but isn’t very well-received. His first task is to kill ghosts in the mortal realm and this is when he meets the other male lead, Leader of Ghost City. Unbeknownst to our Prince, Leader of Ghost City has been harboring a crush on him for 800 years. Turns out, the Crown Prince saved the boy during his first ascension. The lightning bolt of love hit then and it looks like a deep one.

Well, well, well. Is this novel long guys? I might give it a try. Right now, casting is underway but since Huace has a part in production, so they will always prefer to promote one of their own and Cheng Yi is the top rumored choice. Those who have read the novel, which actors were your top contenders?

Some Pictures from the Manhua and Animation:

I think it’s pretty clear who’s wearing what. Lol.

You can read the novel here. There’s a Chinese animation too with English-Subtitles, but it’s a paid subscription on Youtube / Bilibili (episodes are free for a certain period of time).

  1. 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

    Didn’t read the novel but being a MDZS fan following the fanfic writers and artists as well as super fans, I was exposed to a lot of HOB content. Some MDZS fanfic writers feel that HOB suffers from structural issues. The author had been working on major revision but seemed that excessive online trolling and various MDZS fan-antifan incidences caused her to stop everything.

    This story isn’t my cup of tea in that male lead in white (Xie Lin, the Crown Prince) suffered great deal torture and terrible betrayals, including from the masses he tried help. What is the most memorable for me, though, is the vow of male in red (Hua Cheng, the Ghost King): something like, “For you, I become invincible.”

    • 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

      By the way, HOB is long. It’s about twice as long as MDZS.

      • 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

        TWICE?! Thanks Keekeepod. My decision to only watch is secured. Lol.

  2. 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

    The novel is long but it covers a lot of ground in terms of plots and events. This may or may not justify length depending on opinion. I feel like this one would be harder to adapt to book fans satisfaction than MDZS because the romance part is more obvious than MDZS and to do the world/setting justice would require a budget and good CGI. I also think the book touches on some censored topics so wondering how they will handle that.

    I have no one special in mind for the actors but I see Lu Han is a popular choice? Or at least I keep seeing his name pop up and I’m just like please no. He’s not a good actor! It’ll be tough on whoever gets the roles cause I can see constant comparisons to Untamed and XZ/WYB coming down the pipe. If casting doesn’t work…oh boy.

    • 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

      Lu Han actually gave pretty good performances in his two recent dramas (Sisphyus and Cross Fire), and it’s largely his looks that make him such a popular choice. Regardless, they probably can’t and won’t cast him anyways so lol that’s moot.

      • 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

        I heard Luhan improved a lot in his recent 2 dramas. But i think he can’t pull the bromance off convincingly and I think his a lot better in modern dramas. This one will really need the chemistry of the leads to work

    • 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

      XZ and WYB weren’t that great when they were first casted in untamed anyway.. why the prejudice? for such drama, the acting is never the main point, it’s the story and chemistry between the leads.. in any case, whomever got casted, may have to deal with all the critics especially novel fans.. it may even overshadow the show itself =.=

  3. 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

    Nothing against BL drama but if they keep doing it back to back.. it gets boring. Didn’t like 4 BL novel got announce so far to get adapted into drama..

    • 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

      4 BL vs 100 BG dramas and other genres.
      I think the boring ones are the rom-coms and historical romance dramas. Those are stale already.

    • 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

      Many Chinese BL novel fans are exasperated by the flurry of BL drama adaptations, “Have they run out of BG material to ruin with dramas? Why do they have to mess with our stuff?!”

      • 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

        My guess is they now probably think they can get away with scrubbing the romance and sexual identity from BL novels and still have it be successful, why not?

        I’m interested to see Immortality as a test case cause imo that novel just centers so much around the relationships that removing it makes it a whole different story. They even changed one of the male characters to female. So far I haven’t seen any big uproar about it? But I could be wrong, haven’t been following it. I don’t care cause I didn’t like the novel at all but interested to see what book fans think and how they’ll receive it and how much that will influence general non book fans audience.

        • 12 thoughts on “The Untamed’s director Chen Jia Lin takes on drama adaptation of Boy-Love novel Heaven Official’s Blessing

          Novel fans had an uproar but lead actors’ fan clubs, with perhaps cybertroopers, pretty much drowned it out on popular threads so novel fans grumbled in the novel’s comments as well as in audio drama’s bullet comments and comment section. Besides, I don’t think Chinese BL novel fans want to bring widespread scrutiny to their genre by engaging actor fan clubs in online warfare.

          The novel was definitely a rough read for me. Knowing what happens in the story, changing that particular character from male to female, unless the entire character’s motivations and actions are completely remade, feels like misogynistic move to me.

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