The outdoor billboards towering over the streets of Centum City during this year’s Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) said it all. One was for the second season of Netflix’s Hellbound and the other for Disney’s Gangnam B-Side, both of which were premiering in BIFF’s On Screen section. The lack of big billboards for any other content suggested that the only companies with money to splash on outdoor advertising these days are global streamers.
BIFF, which wraps tonight, along with its industry platform Asian Contents and Film Market (ACFM), is the biggest film event in Asia, and has also embraced streaming with the On Screen section, premiering series, and the Asia Contents Awards, recognising content made for OTT platforms.
But while the festival has moved with the times, it has a reputation for supporting indie and arthouse films, as well as the theatrical ecosystem, so eyebrows were raised this year when it chose Uprising, a Netflix-funded production, as the opening film.
Not surprisingly for an event attended by cineastes and filmmakers, much of the chatter at the festival was about the selection of this film, which won’t be screening in theatres, at a time when Korean box office, once the fourth biggest in the world, continues to struggle. Although there have been a few hits this year, including The Roundup: Punishment, Exhuma and most recently I, The Executioner, Korean box office is still only at 60% of pre-pandemic levels.
But the issues facing the Korean and wider Asian content industries go way beyond whether a film should play in cinemas or not. There are much bigger challenges connected to the way that the global tech and content industries are evolving – and how governments around the world are responding to these changes.
Which brings us back to Netflix. The streamer had a large presence at the festival. It held a series of junkets for Uprising and two other series premiering in the On Screen section (Taiwan’s Born For The Spotlight and Japan’s Beyond Goodbye); hosted an evening event to showcase its upcoming Korean films slate; and also held a one-day ‘Creative Asia Forum’, featuring a series of panels with Asian filmmakers in conversation with Netflix executives.
Local studio CJ ENM also held an event to announce that it plans to invest $750m per year in content, which should bring some cheer to the local industry, but it seemed almost like a defensive move. Last year, Netflix announced that it was spending $2.5bn on Korean content over four years, which works out to $625m a year, so was CJ sending a message that it can outspend Netflix? When a vertically integrated Korean studio, that in pre-pandemic times was accused of monopolising the local industry, starts to look defensive, you know the landscape has changed considerably.
Outside of the forums and press events, one of the hot topics of conversation in the industry was soaring production costs. I was told that one episode of high-end Korean drama cost around $250,000 before the pandemic, but now costs around $500,000, while Japan is a similar story. In Taiwan, the cost per episode has tripled from $100,000 to $300,000. Of course there are many complex reasons for inflation, and all the blame cannot be laid at Netflix’s door, but when a global streamer enters a market and starts spending billions of dollars, it inevitably drives up costs and leaves local players struggling to compete.
All of which eventually leads to a monopoly situation. Disney+ is also making K-content, but not at the same scale as Netflix, and none of the other global streamers are doing anything beyond dipping a toe. Meanwhile, local Korean studios and broadcasters are struggling with the double whammy of declining ad revenues and rising production costs, and local streaming services – TVing and Wavve – are trailing Netflix in subscriber numbers and revenue. Netflix would argue that it is investing in Korean talent and has accelerated the global distribution of Korean content, which is completely true, but perhaps not in a way that is benefitting Korean studios and broadcasters.
While some dismiss these changes as no more worrying than the introduction of new technologies such as sound, television and home video, it’s worth considering that global internet access brings a new dimension to tech developments in the industry. The trend in the internet age is for one company to move quickly, outspend its competitors and become the default setting on a global scale, which wasn’t possible with any previous technology. This is what we’ve seen so far with software, search, shopping and social media, and what we’re starting to see now with long-form content.
But films and series are not the same as shopping and search. Beyond the cold, hard numbers of investment and return, there are also issues of culture and identity.
Korea probably can’t be described as having a monopoly in streaming and content production just yet – but it is moving towards that reality. A similar situation could also arise in territories such as Thailand and Taiwan. One exec I spoke to during ACFM said that, ironically, the only markets that are protected are ones where the local players have already monopolised the talent pool and are unlikely to give Netflix open access to their stars and directors.
Monopolies are not good for creatives – filmmakers don’t have any negotiating leverage when there’s only one shop in town to fund their projects – and they’re also not good for the wider ecosystem. It’s in everyone’s interest to have a level playing field with multiple companies investing in and making profits from a diverse range of content that is greenlighted and curated by different gatekeepers.
And all these issues are arising before the industry even feels the full impact of AI technologies. Seminars at ACFM focused on how AI can be used to speed up processes and bring convenience to the content industries – and again all that is true. But further down the line, huge swathes of below-the-line jobs could be wiped out by AI and we also need to think about how we approach regulation and copyright of AI-generated content.
I’ve recently been reading AI online forums in which users rave about how the technology will “democratise” film production in the same way that journalism can now be practised by just about anyone. But just look at the sorry state of the journalism industry today. What has anyone apart from Big Tech really gained from this democratisation? As somebody with my own individual platform, I believe we absolutely need guardrails in place to uphold professional journalistic standards, and to support and protect legacy media, rather than revel in its demise.
But back to Asia’s OTT platforms. During an ACFM panel, Korea’s Dongguk University presented figures showing that Netflix is gaining market share at the expense of local streamers in most Asian markets except China, where it is not allowed to operate, and Indonesia where it had a late start. Following a research project funded by Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Dongguk also proposed that Asian OTT platforms remain competitive by forming a pan-regional coalition; raising a joint content fund from public and private sources, and working together on areas such as production, distribution of each other’s content, governance and training.
If all this were possible, it could help overcome a major issue faced by Asian streamers – that they lack resources to produce content consistently over the long-term, at the scale that is required to remain competitive and prevent subscriber churn. Of course, US legacy studios and the rest of the world are also grappling with these issues – but in many cases they are better equipped to deal with them. Europe has the EU Single Market Copyright Directive, while France and other European territories have laws to protect and fund their local industries. Even the UK has realised that it needs to do something to support its floundering independent film industry.
Asia has very few policies to tackle these issues on either a regional or in-country level. The proposals from Dongguk University are interesting, but of course it’s much harder to develop pan-Asian policy when governments across the region range from liberal democracies to outright dictatorships – or for creative industries to collaborate when they’re based in economies of very different sizes and stages of development.
But as former producer and Dongguk University professor Tcha Seung-jae (Memories Of Murder, Save The Green Planet!) told ACFM delegates – that doesn’t mean that everyone should just give up. Following ACFM’s precedent, perhaps now is the time to openly discuss these issues and look at ways to build a sustainable future for the Asian film and TV industries, rather than leaving the future to chance.
IN THE TRADES:
AWARDS SEASON:
See here for a rolling list of submissions for the Best International Feature category of the Oscars from Asia, Africa and the Middle East (regardless of whether the titles have been submitted by their country of origin).
LAB & FUNDING NEWS:
‘Kingdom Of The Insomniacs’ Wins Busan Award At Asian Project Market
Seattle’s Tasveer Film Market Unveils 40+ South Asian Projects for Inaugural Edition
Next Narrative Africa, HEVA Fund Launch $40 Million Content Creator Initiative
PRODUCTION NEWS:
CJ ENM Maintains Content Spend At $750M, Execs Outline New Revenue Streams And Overseas Growth
Fan Bingbing Confirmed to Star in Chong Keat Aun’s ‘Mother Bhumi’
‘Grandma’ producers GDH 559 to remake Taiwan hit ‘Marry My Dead Body’ with Billkin and PP
Taiwan’s GrX Studio to unveil $50m fund and ‘The Photo From 1977’ cast
Veteran Taiwan Producer Patrick Mao Huang Unveils New Projects at Busan ACFM
Taiwanese Actress Shu Qi Wraps Directorial Debut ‘Girl’
Cannes Prizewinner Vimukthi Jayasundara’s ‘Turtle’s Gaze on Spying Stars’ Commences Shoot
CORPORATE:
Disney Seeking $940 Million From India’s Zee Over Failed Cricket Rights Deal
Amazon Completes Deal For Indian Streamer MX Player
CANCELLED:
‘My Favourite Cake’ co-directors say Iran has reinstated travel ban
‘For Rana’ Iranian director Iman Yazdi absent from Busan film festival amid escalating conflict
CURATED:
Korea’s ‘The Land Of Morning Calm’, Myanmar’s ‘MA Cry Of Silence’ Win New Currents Awards At Busan
Singapore Film Fest To Honor Jafar Panahi, ‘Stranger Eyes’ Selected As Opening Film
Bhutan Film Festival Organizers Talk Inaugural Edition, 2025 Expansion Plans
RELEASED:
China National Day Box Office Falls 23% Short of Last Year
Miyazaki Hayao’s Studio Ghibli, MM2 Ink Southeast Asia Distribution Deal
SOLD:
Barunson E&A sells Korean comedy ‘Amazon Bullseye’ across Asia
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Cloud’ headed to UK-Ire, Germany, Asia
Japanese Film ‘Living in Two Worlds’ Secures Sales To China, Korea, Taiwan & Other Territories
Venice Hit ‘Happyend’ Scores Multiple Territory Sales, Including France and China, for Magnify
Hong Kong disaster film ‘Cesium Fallout’ starring Andy Lau lands North America, Asia deals
Front Row Acquires Nadine Labaki EP’d Anthology Film ‘Disorder’ Exploring Recent Lebanese History
STREAMING UPDATES:
Leading K-Content Firms Strike Supply Deals With U.S. FAST Channel Samsung TV Plus
Netflix Unveils 2025 Korean Film Slate, Including ‘Revelations’ & ‘The Great Flood’
Paramount+ to Launch in Thailand Within Monomax Streaming Platform
Philippines to Impose 12% Tax on Foreign Streamers – Global Bulletin
Wong Kar-wai’s ‘Blossoms Shanghai,’ Coupang Play’s ‘Boyhood’ Take Top Prizes At Asia Contents Awards