Turner & Tencent Team Up for Drama Starring Tuzki

An upcoming Chinese drama from Tencent Pictures, Second Time is a Charm, will star Turner Asia Pacific’s WeChat emoticon rabbit Tuzki.

Turner Asia Pacific, a WarnerMedia company, has licensed Tuzki to Tencent for the series and has made a financial investment in its production, per the agreement. Second Time is a Charm’s debut season is slated to premiere in 2019 and is expected to have approximately 50 episodes.

Momo Wang, the creator of the rabbit IP, is creatively involved in the project, designing new characters and adaptations of the show’s characters in keeping with Tuzki’s style. Wang’s career is the inspiration for Second Time is a Charm’s protagonist An’an, a comics and animation enthusiast. Though she struggles to find her footing in the aftermath of a contentious divorce from the man she married straight out of college and with whom she has a five-year-old son, she eventually finds new love with her divorce lawyer and embarks on a career as an illustrator, ultimately creating Tuzki. Tuzki will feature heavily in the series and in animated shorts at the end of each episode in special story recaps.

Lisa Li, Turner China’s country head, said: “This is the next evolution of the Tuzki brand together with Tencent. We’ve worked together already on an animated series and on the upcoming theatrical movie, and of course on the WeChat messaging platform. But this will be the first drama series that features Tuzki, and it’s going to appeal to an audience that has grown up using the character to communicate with their friends and who know him as a fashion icon.”