China cancels its own version of Game of Thrones

Epic fantasies such as Novoland and GoT aren’t historically accurate enough for China

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Is this supposed to be the Chinese Jon Snow? (Picture: Novoland: Eagle Flag)

Masha Borak

Published: 9:57pm, 5 Jun 2019Updated: 9:06am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

China is in a war against historical fantasy. (Also history in general, but that’s another story).

The first episode of a TV series seen as the Chinese answer to Game of Thrones saw the same fate as the series finale of GoT, which was shelved indefinitely in China hours before airing worldwide last month. The highly-anticipated Novoland: Eagle Flag, the latest show set in the fictional Novoland universe, was also suddenly canceled on Monday just minutes before airing.

Streaming site Tencent Video even offered up the same excuse it gave for the GoT episode: “Media transfer issues.”

Many crying emojis were spilled over the loss on the microblogging platform Weibo.

“Media transfer issues? Is the tape broken or the USB broken?” one Weibo user asked. Others chimed in with sarcastic comments, citing “media transfer issues” as the reason they can’t take national examinations or don’t have a girlfriend.

Not all Weibo users were disappointed with Novoland’s cancellation. Some said the acting was quite bad. (Picture: Novoland: Eagle Flag)

Novoland is based on a series of popular epic fantasy novels with many similarities to A Song of Ice and Fire, the novels behind HBO’s mega-popular GoT. The books tell the story of three fictional continents in an ancient world of mythical races in which kingdoms and tribes wage fierce power struggles. Media has reported that RMB 500 million (more than US$72 million) has already been invested in the show.