the Magnolia TV Forum of the ongoing 21st Shanghai TV Festival

scriptwriters and TV producers from  Internet  magnates.

Wu Wenhui, CEO of China Reading Limited said that they are engaged in adapting hot online novels into films, TV series and games to cater for the huge number of Netizens in China.

"Transactions on intellectual property rights of these novels are  hot  these days," said Wu. "More and more TV production companies are ready to spend several million yuan on the rights  of  adaptation  of  a  novel into  films  or  TV  series."
Among today\'s most popular Chinese TV series are productions based on hot online novels such as the fantasy drama Swords of Legends and romantic series My Sunshine.

Online video-sharing websites are now venturing into TV production and more involved in various phases including scriptwriting, casting, production, marketing and broadcasting.

"Everyday we receive a lot of fiction pitches for potential TV and film scripts," said Wang Juan, deputy general manager of Tencent Online Video. "Candidates with fame and good original stories will be selected."

Over the passing year, Tencent Online Video has also invested  in and produced the acclaimed online thriller series Darker, which is adapted from an online novel The Death Notice.

Production budget for some online series is also rapidly rising to 5 million yuan per episode, even higher than that of many  traditional  TV  series.

"With a huge base of loyal fans of original online novels, such series are more likely to be well-received among young TV viewers," said veteran producer Karen Tsai, president of Chinese Entertainment Shanghai. "But in terms of the rising price of script copyright for a novel, producers need to be very careful and rational with the selection. Not all the stories are appropriate to be made into films or TV series."
Celebrated scriptwriter Wang Liping is encouraging more original scripts.

"Compared with foreign peers, Chinese scriptwriters still lack creativity," she said.