BUSAN 2024: Should Asia’s Content Biz Consider Policy To Respond To Inflation, Monopoly & AI?

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 surp…