Vice to explore Hype Culture for China’s Tencent Video

Vice Studios is making a new series for Chinese online platform Tencent Video, which explores ‘Hype Culture’ around the globe.

The 8×25-minute series will look at how various young tribes define their identity across the world.

Beyond China, production will take place in Japan, India, the UK, Germany, USA, Russia, Nigeria, and Jamaica.

Vice says the series aims to “shed light on a decentralised global culture where particular scenes or sets of people are no longer the sole source of all trends – a post-millennial world where movements, attitudes, styles and changes are found in all corners.”

The series is earmarked for a late 2019 release through Tencent Video.

Vice’s CEO for Asia-Pacific Hosi Simon said: “Young people in China are at a real inflection point. Taking inspirations from every corner of the world, they’re putting them through their own, very distinct lens to create something very unique and new – freely and at an unprecedented scale.”

It’s the second deal in Asia that Vice has unveiled this week. Yesterday Singapore’s Mediacorp announced a deal with Vice that will see the youth skewing company’s digital and TV content brought to its audiences.

Vice’s credits in China include Just Dance, a docuseries profiling street dancing across the country, Young Chinese, a series on China’s nascent generation, and Trap in Southwest, about the alternative music scene in the southwest cities of Chengdu and Chongqing.

Lexian Zhu, deputy director of Documentary Content Management Center at Tencent Video, said: “Growing up amid the booming of the Internet, young Chinese are boldly showing their own personality, and growing into a young generation with unique values. Tencent Video is looking forward to tracking the global trends shaping this, searching for the creative sources of inspiration and bringing it to our audience so that they can better engage with the wave of globalisation and their place in the world.”