roadwarrior_idn:
I think it still a long way for TGCF to be adopted to live action drama. Just because of the complexity many of the scenes and characters on the novel. I imagine it gonna be so costly to create a good representation of ghost city and mount tong lu.. I don't think the budget would justify enough for a drama series. If they really serious in making a good adaptation of th novel, that is.. they would need a kind of "Marvel Studio" budget :)
Idk if it's that much of expenses. Have a look at Nightless City or other cgi in cql [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pjGDH-yQxE ]
They can obtain a lot with editiors work- especially this is a Ghost City we're talking abt so the most part of scenery can be hazy, smoky, underexposed or sth that can help to obtain a proper impression with less effort.
But it's all just my speculations of course. It's obvious the drama won't be cheap to be good enough.
EDIT:
I also wanted to add that the preparations for CQL drama started in June 2016, and it took them two years to start filming (April 2018), then year after it came out.
However, as the opposite example another drama where Xiao Zhan takes part in- The Wolf has been filmed in 2017 (not to mention the preps before actual play) and till now- hasn't been released yet
So it's so hard to predict even the approximate data for c-dramas, but I guess if the hypetrain is longer- the bigger is urge to release a series (we know, the money rules the World). We can observe this in the "Immortality" (2HA- similar popular novel) - they started filming quite fast- in April and the announced release date is 2021.