The young adult series Fly The Jumper (違反校規的跳投), produced by Studio76, has broken viewership records with its second episode, attracting over 400,000 effective clicks thru Taiwan’s MyVideo and China’s Bili Bili, a new record for a Mandarin mini-series on digital platforms in these two regions.

Fly The Jumper tells the story of a young man named Zhang Jian-Yi (played by Wu Nien Hsuan 吳念軒) who loves basketball so much. Even though he was diagnosed with heart disease at 11-years-old, he still practiced basketball privately every day until his high school team manager, the observant and beautiful Yan-Xi (played by Tsai Jui Hsueh 蔡瑞雪 ) accidentally discovered Jian-Yi’s talent. Suddenly, Jian-Yi dreams about basketball, and a perfect girlfriend is right in front of him.

Fly The Jumper is a four-part mini-series with one new episode each week that runs for 25 minutes per episode format, that is perfectly targeted for a younger audience. In this vastly growing and very diversified Asian OTT market with so much content to choose from, Fly The Jumper’s second episode saw over 400,000 effective clicks, proving that the Young Adult drama’s success proves to have found its audience.

To make the series even more compelling and authentic, Fly The Jumper also invited one of the top professional players in Taiwan — “The Beast” Lin, Che-Jie of the Fubon Braves, and its coach Wei Wei for a cameo performance. Fly The Jumper also has a surprise appearance from Yen Hsing-Su, a former Taiwan National Team member, nicknamed “The Basketball Genie”, who became a famous TV actor in the early 2000s, and is now a real-life high school basketball coach.

With the vigorously growing market of OTT platforms, it is in desperate need of new and high-quality content. It also needs producers to experience new format and distribution methods to reach more audiences. That is exactly what the Taiwanese-based Studio76 is trying to persuade.

Studio76 focuses on producing web series, with various and flexible formats. Every episode ranges from 12 to 45 minutes and depending on what the story needs, determines how many episodes will be produced. Fly The Jumper is a perfect example, and it is also approved and praised by critics.

Studio76 demonstrates a new content business concept: Raise a regional fund to support and develop Chinese original stories IP out from Taiwan, develop the stories into digital-first, genre-focused mini-series for OTT platforms in short formats and sell to the world.

Critic Ko, Chi-Yuan said in his review: “The reason why Fly The Jumper is worth recommending is because of its simplicity and its breakthrough-style of storytelling. Within 100 minutes (4 episodes of 25 minutes) of the mini-series format, it tries to raise a discussion of life creatively. As a sports genre film, it broke the stereotype and invokes a deeper and broader film language style.”

Fly The Jumper is produced by Studio76, myVideo, and Dentsu Aegis Network Taiwan. It is released through myVideo and BiliBili OTT platforms. A new episode is released every Friday. The final episode aired on 31 July and the series can be streamed on meWatch in Singapore soon.