Okay, because I have been following the Replay drama on Twitter since Wednesday, here is what I’ve been able to cobble together on why the decision to cancel it came so quickly.
The Replay pilot that aired seems to be three of the author Julalumpa’s stories rolled into one show. All were RPF fanfiction that the author monetized against the TOS of Joylada (Thai fiction platform). She hid them behind an additional paywall to hide that they were monetized.
What RPF fanfiction fancon you ask: Wang Yi Bo and Xiao Zhan (the lead actors for the censored Chinese BL The Untamed—can we see the third rail here?) While the author herself is Thai and was not involved in the 227 incident that lead to the banning of AO3 in China, and artists to lose brand deals and receive death threats, this is the RPF fandom at the heart of that scandal.
One of the biggest problems seems to stem from the fact that she not only used specific details from their lives in these fanfictions, but also used photographs to embed within and promote her fics that definitely she did not pay to license for commercial use. Some of these pictures were of the actors themselves, some were fan edits that were made of them photoshopped into various costumes and some of them were professional photos of additional real people that she embedded (specifically a whole bunch of the stuff in the motorcycle fanfiction were professional racing photos and photos from news articles of racers including Wang Yi Bo in his time as a racer himself). This is several levels of copyright infringement happening around countries with much stricter laws around copyright but also defamation and use of likeness than the West.
The controversy blew up both in Thailand and in China in 2020/2021, and it’s estimated that the author made at least 3 million baht (conservative estimate because there is no data for one of the Joylada revenue streams that was turned on) and nearly caused the Joylada site to fold.
She tried to file the serial numbers off but made very nominal changes to the point that people are still posting the reference photos from her fics alongside the poster GMMTV made for Replay and Wang Yi Bo’s racing number barely being changed from 85 -> 87.
From what I saw, the Thai fans were trying to ask GMMTV to do what they did with Not Me (which was a MarkBambam RPF fanfiction first) which was change significant details and asked interfans not to get too involved and let the Thais handle it internally because once it hit Chinese fans the damage it could do to the Thai actors tied to the project could be consequential.
All of the above: the fact that several real images alongside the RPF were used to prompt and earn money off of the RPF and the fact that the fandom at the base was the actors for the very large The Untamed censored BL which has already had some very serious consequences for the actors and Chinese fandom at large…I think we can see why GMMTV might back away rapidly before the heat turns from them to three of their larger pairs who do numbers internally and internationally. Especially considering how much money China feeds into the international entertainment industry as a whole.
Sources: WittySmirK, BJYX51058, 200fifty, Maylin974, pptnarawins
