According to Chinese media, recently, a source in the entertainment industry revealed about a top actress, whose movie will air this year, which has attracted attention.
According to this person, a few years ago, the actress's cat-xe was up to tens of millions of CNY, but the estimated price for the recent project is only about 1 million CNY (about 3.8 billion VND).
The information quickly reached the top of searches on Weibo, causing social networks to stir up speculation about the identity.
Some netizens speculate that names like Liu Yifei, Trieu Lo Tu, Ly Nhat Dong may be related, because these actresses were previously said to have received tens of millions of CNY in salaries in the previous period.
However, other viewers and some people in the industry believe that the fee reduction from tens of millions of CNY to only 1 million CNY is too large a decrease, difficult to match the current level of the long-running TV drama market.
After policies to control actors' salaries and the pressure of "reducing costs, improving efficiency" from platforms, actors' remuneration has generally been adjusted down. According to some industry information, the salary of top actors for a TV series once went from hundreds of millions of CNY at its peak to about 25 million CNY (about 97 billion VND), but is still quite far from the 1 million CNY level.
The long-running TV drama market is also shrinking. In the first quarter of 2026, China's four major platforms had only 28 long-running dramas started filming, a significant decrease compared to the same period. Project supply decreased, causing actors to gradually lose their advantage in salary negotiations.
Meanwhile, the rapid development of AI short films with very low production costs is directly competing with TV series starring real actors. This is considered one of the factors putting pressure on actors' salaries.
However, public opinion still has mixed reactions to the information about the fee reduction of celebrities. Some opinions suggest that even an income of 1 million CNY is still an amount of money that most ordinary workers can hardly earn for many years. Therefore, the fee reduction of actors has not received sympathy from a part of netizens.
Meanwhile, some analysts believe that the decrease in cat-xe is a sign that the market is eliminating the inflation of remuneration and bringing the income of actors to a more reasonable level.
However, another department pointed out that the fee cut has not shown a clear improvement in film quality, and the saved budget may be mainly used to offset the losses of the platforms.
