Soul Ferry: Dream of the Celestial Maiden

Soul Ferry: Dream of the Celestial Maiden (灵魂摆渡·天女之梦) is an AI-generated web feature (网络故事片) released exclusively on iQIYI at 10:00 on 22 August 2026. It is the second of three films in the "Dream of Floating Life" (浮生梦) series of the Soul Ferry franchise, released the same day as Butterfly Dream; a third, Princess Dream, was to follow. iQIYI's international distribution channel lists it at 63 minutes. It is produced by iQIYI and Changxin Media (长信传媒), directed by Ding Kuan (丁宽), written by Xiao Jixiangtian (小吉祥天), with Li Zhichao (李志超) as producer and Guo Jingyu (郭靖宇) as art director.

Beijing Daily, via Xinhua, calls the series the franchise's first fully AI-produced work. Soul Ferry began on iQIYI in 2014 and has run to three web-drama seasons, a web film and a line of short dramas, with about 4.5 billion total plays and a Douban average the report puts above 8.

The reports describe a hybrid method, "AI plus live-performance transfer". Original leads Yu Yi (于毅), Liu Zhiyang (刘智扬) and Xiao Yin (肖茵) licensed their likenesses and performed the voices themselves, while characters and scenes were generated by AI, with motion transfer recreating the actors as they looked when young. Guo Jingyu says the approach suits this franchise alone: it calls for many visual spectacles that would cost more with conventional effects, and the prequel needed the leads' younger selves. The reports do not name the AI models or tools used.

Guo says the voice recordings sometimes exposed misplaced stresses or off emotion in the generated performances, so the AI side adjusted picture and lip movement to match the dub. He says the two films took under four months to make, and that a scene such as the celestial maiden's Kunlun battle would otherwise have needed green-screen shooting and long post-production.

On reception, Beijing Daily reports that in the first week the two films passed a heat score of 6,600 on iQIYI and became the platform's highest-rated web feature of 2026, and that revenue-share box office passed 6 million yuan in ten days. These figures come from the press and the platform. Guo says longtime fans were glad to see the young trio rather than put off by the AI.