Asia Online Video Growing as Free TV Revenues Move Into Secular Decline

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Australia’s SLR Productions has announced production on season two of the award-winning original CGI animated series, “Space Nova” for ABC ME. The 15 x 22-minute season has received significant production funding from both Screen Australia and the Australian Children’s Television Foundation as well as development funding from ABC ME and Create NSW. “Space Nova” will be co-produced with Giggle Garage in Malaysia and distributed internationally by ZDF Studios, with ACTF representing the series across Australia and New Zealand. Targeting a six- to ten-year-old global audience, the first season sold to broadcasters or streamers in Germany, the U.K., Norway, Finland, Sweden, Poland, the U.S, Singapore, East Asia, Indonesia, and Brazil.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Homecoming, a patriotic rescue movie, dominated the mainland China box office for the third successive weekend. Overall numbers remained anemic in the first full week after the National Day holiday period, sometimes referred to as a ‘Golden Week’. “Homecoming” garnered $12.1 million (RMB85.6 million) between Friday and Sunday, according to data from consultancy and research firm Artisan Gateway. That gave the film a 64% share of the nationwide weekend aggregate. Accordingly, it was far ahead of second-placed film “Give Me Five,” which released on Sept. 9, 2022. “Give Me Five” earned just $1.9 million over the weekend, for a six-week cumulative of $63.8 million.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Taiwan-based development and production operation Organic Media is teaming up with Los Angeles-based sales agency and content aggregator Shoreline Entertainment in a strategic pact that sees Shoreline take responsibility for much of Organic’s sales function. The pairing will make its debut at this week’s MIPCOM TV rights market in Cannes. It will follow that with an appearance at the American Film Market in Santa Monica in early November. Organic was co-founded in 2019 by veteran sales and production executive Steve Chicorel and Kelly Mi Li (“Bling Empire”) and now has operations in Taipei, Los Angeles, London, Riga and Brisbane. The operation, now headed by Chicorel and Shari Hamrick, is currently in post-production on two movies and the second season of “Cypher,” a series for Roku.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief While the Busan International Film Festival was busily hailing a return to normality the slump at South Korea’s commercial box office deepened dramatically over the most recent weekend. Cinemagoing nationwide was worth only $4.20 million between Friday and Sunday, the lowest weekend total since April and a time before Korean cinemas shed their COVID restrictions. The weekend’s top film “Life Is Beautiful” managed the lowest first place score of any film this year, with a weekend haul of just $777,000, according to data from Kobiz, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Blackstone Publishing, Aethon Books and Sterling and Stone are among the first publishing partners to join Yonder, a new serialized fiction app combining mobile reading, a serialized experience and thousands of curated stories. Then venture is being launched by South Korea’s Naver, the tech giant that owns Webtoon and Wattpad, the story app that has germinated scores of book-to-film adaptations. The platform offers an ad-free reading experience with several chapters of each story available for free before readers are offered the chance to unlock additional material using virtual coins. At launch, Yonder is the home of exclusive new titles including “Bound to the Shadow Prince,” from Ruby Dixon, the international best-selling fantasy author of the TikTok viral sensation series “Ice Planet Barbarians”; “Bitten by Desire,” the first paranormal romance from best-selling author Ivy Smoak, (“The Hunted” book series”; and “Gravesong,” a spinoff of the popular web serial “The Wandering Inn,” from pirateaba.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean film “A Wild Roomer” and India’s “Shivamma” have been announced as the joint winners of the New Currents competition, the prestige discovery section of the Busan International Film Festival. “We were particularly sensitive to the lightness and subtlety of the director’s view of his characters. Through his innovative cinematography, he creates original circulations between the characters within a house, and builds a very contemporary universe,” the competition jury said of the Lee Jeon-hong-directed “A Wild Roomer.” “We appreciated the originality and intensity with which the director was able to tell this very contemporary story. Here documentary and fiction meet in an organic and spirited way of making cinema. The generosity of the actors and the scenes create a closeness with this universal story that takes place in an Indian village,” the jury said of the Jaishankar Aryar-directed “Shivamma.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Kamila Andini’s “Before Now and Then” (aka “Nana”) topped the nominations for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, with nods in four categories including best film and best director. The film, about a gentlewoman’s memories of escaping from a Communist purge, narrowly headed three films with three nominations each: “Poet” (aka “Akyn”) by Kazakhstan’s Darezhan Omirbayev; “This Is What I Remember” (aka “Esimde”) by Kyrgyzstan’s Aktan Arym Kubat; and Philippines director Lav Diaz’s “When The Waves Are Gone” (“Kapag Wala Nang Mga Alon”). APSA casts its net wide, seeking honors for cinematic excellence from 78 countries and territories defined as Asia Pacific. The awards will be presented at a ceremony at HOTA on Australia’s Gold Coast on Nov. 11, 2022.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japanese director Kawase Naomi will lead the international competition jury of the 44th Cairo International Film Festival (Nov. 13-22). Kawase won the Caméra d’Or for best debut feature film at Cannes for “Moe no Suzaku” (1997) and also won awards there for “Mogari no Mori” (2007) and “Hikari” (2017). In 2000, her film “Hotaru” won the FIPRESCI award at Locarno. Cairo festival president Hussein Fahmy said that Kawase has had a distinguished career and possesses great experience that qualified her to obtain prestigious awards from various international festivals.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Patriotic rescue film “Homecoming” largely dominated the Chinese box office over the latest weekend and brought to a close a deeply-depressed National Day holiday period. “Homecoming” earned $21.5 million between Friday and Sunday to lift its ten-day cumulative to $163 million, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. That score accounted for a 71% share of the weekend’s $30.3 million total. Second-placed film “Ordinary Hero” earned just $2.2 million, giving it a ten-day total of $19.7 million. Previous top-ranking film, “Give Me Five” held on to third place, despite the volley of new releases on either September 30 or October 1. It collected $1.7 million for a cumulative of $60.8 million since release on Sept. 9, 2022.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Comedy action film “Confidential Assignment 2: International” claimed its fifth successive weekend victory at the South Korean box office as only U.S. horror film “Smile” was able to break into the top five.The CJ Entertainment-distributed “Confidential Assignment 2” managed $1.64 million over the Friday to Sunday period, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC). That represented a 27% share of the market. “Confidential Assignment 2” recorded a 27% weekend on weekend decline. That pushed its cumulative total to $47 million, earned form $6.52 million ticket sales since release on Set. 7, 2022.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Rithy Panh, director of “Rice People” and “S21 The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine” is an icon of art-house cinema, at once political, unique, and charming. The iconic image may be another of his confections – a palatable work built on uncomfortable facts. On the incomplete evidence of a 50-minute on-stage dialog at the Busan International Film Festival on Sunday, Panh comes across as simultaneously contrarian and principled. A curmudgeonly veteran and yet a filmmaker still curious to learn. “If there were no Khmer Rouge maybe I would not be a filmmaker,” he said of the Communist insurgents, who won the Cambodian civil war in 1975 and whose brutality and atrocities he has spent a lifetime documenting and exposing.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Kamila Andini, Indonesian filmmaker and member of the jury at this year’s Busan International Film Festival, said that she would look out for “Asian texture” among the films presented in the festival’s premiere New Currents competition section. French director Alain Guiraudie said that he would be seeking “new colors” and “new flavors.” He added that he thought Asian cinema could be “enigmatic and mysterious.” Both were speaking at a meet the press event on Thursday, the first full day of the festival. And jurors have yet to start screening the competition titles.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Paramount has ordered a series of ‘Taskmaster Australia’ to be produced by Avalon Television with Kevin & Co for Network 10. Set to air in 2023, the show will be hosted by Tom Gleeson and Tom Cashman. The production in Australia joins a growing list of countries with local adaptations of Alex Horne’s BAFTA and National Comedy Award winning “Taskmaster” format. The show involves an all-powerful Taskmaster who, with the help of his loyal assistant, sets out to test the wiles, wit and wisdom of five comedians through a series of strange and surreal challenges.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hong Kong multi-hyphenate Peter Chan Ho-sun is far too intellectual to call himself an “arms dealer,” as Sony Pictures has in casting itself as an unattached supplier to streaming platforms. But politeness and Bob Dylan references aside, Chan’s new company, Changin’ Pictures, aims to become a major independent purveyor of premium Asian TV content for the streamers. The company is using this week’s Busan International Film Festival as its launchpad and will unveil the first five series of its 20-title pan-Asian slate.  Chan’s thesis is that global audiences are hungry for Asian content but have not been able to access it easily under legacy film and TV distribution systems. With streaming making everything accessible everywhere, and audiences no longer balking at subtitles, quality Asian drama can and will travel.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Veteran media executive Fotini Paraskakis is launching Empire of Arkadia, an Asia-focused content company. The firm expects to unveil its debut slate in time for MIPCOM later this month. Paraskakis is joined in the venture by Japanese media executive Shigeko (Cindy) Chino and former Discovery APAC and EMEA president, Arthur Bastings. The trio describe Empire of Arkadia’s mission as bringing Asian-inspired stories, in both scripted and non-scripted sectors, to the international stage. They will lead with “forwarding-thinking stories that speak to younger generations.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Fresh from a chaotic Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday, TV coverage of Formula One motor racing is set to shift broadcasting partner in Asia-Pacific. Sports Business reports that pay-TV broadcaster beIN Sports is finalizing a multi-year deal beginning in 2023 reaching across most of its Asia-Pacific footprint, but excluding Australia, where Foxtel recently renewed its deal, and New Zealand.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japanese indie sales Firm Free Stone Productions has added a quartet of new titles to its line-up in time for the rights markets in Busan and Tokyo. The company is unable to travel to Busan and will meet with clients virtually at the Asian Contents & Film Market. The TIFFCOM market, which runs alongside the Tokyo International Film Festival later in the month, is anyway a virtual event. Top of the list is “In Her Room,” a romance about a young dentist who embarks on a romance with a mysterious woman but cannot figure her out. The film will play in the Nippon Cinema Now section of the Tokyo festival and have a Japanese commercial release from January. It is the feature debut if Ito Chihiro and stars Iguchi Satoru, Baba Fumika and Kawai Yuumi.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Gerhard Zeiler, president of International at Warner Bros. Discovery, has moved to reassure the Asia-Pacific region that it is an integral part of the group’s post-merger strategy. “Don’t believe that we don’t know how important Asia is for our company, he said Thursday. Zeiler was speaking at the APOS Convention in Singapore on Thursday. He cited examples of theatrical success for “Batman” and “Fantastic Beasts” in the region and investment in local production in the region. The reassurance may have been necessary following post-merger announcements that proposed changes in North America, Latin America and Europe ahead of Asia – despite recent external data showing Asia-Pacific as one of the world’s fastest growth regions.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Soi Cheang Pou-soi’s crime thriller “Limbo” is the front-runner in the Golden Horse Film Awards, with 14 nominations. It is narrowly ahead of Taiwan-produced “Coo-Coo 043” and “Incantation,” which both have 13 nominations. All three films compete for the best feature award, best director, supporting actor, art direction, makeup and costume design, original film score, film editing and sound effects. The Taiwan-based Golden Horse Awards have long been considered as the most prestigious prize race for Chinese language films, but they have been boycotted by mainland Chinese films and filmmakers for the past three years on the order of mainland Chinese authorities. This followed a pro-Taiwan independence speech given from the stage in 2018 by a local prize winner.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Veteran film executive Kylie Munnich has joined leading Australian independent producer Goalpost Pictures as its CEO. She takes up the newly-created position from Nov. 1, 2022, after recently departing from Screen Queensland, which she headed for the past three years. Prior to Screen Queensland, Kylie worked as a scripted sales and co-production executive for Seven Studios, Australia. Before that, she was senior VP for distribution Asia-Pacific for Sonar Entertainment overseeing sales for premium drama series such as Tom Hardy’s “Taboo” and Pierce Brosnan’s “The Son.”