Europe is reportedly K-pop’s fastest growing market

Three people have been rushed to hospital with serious burn injuries and city centre buildings evacuated following a reported gas explosion at Chester Market tonight.

K.J. Yossman Former Amazon Studios Europe boss Georgia Brown has revealed her first industry role since leaving the streamer last year. She is set to chair a skills task force for the U.K. screen industry with the intention of focusing on critical labor shortages in the production sector. Joining her on the task force will be senior representatives from major U.K. broadcasters BBC, ITV and Channel 4 as well as international studios and streamers including Prime Video, Netflix, Disney and NBCUniversal, key orgs such as ScreenSkills, PACT and the British Film Commission and national screen agencies. The British Film Institute (BFI) have convened the task force following a skills review commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport showing crew shortfalls will soon reach breaking point. Its remit is to produce and support a plan of action that will result in growth, training and increased retention in the screen sector as well as improvements in equity, diversity and inclusion and mental health. Where appropriate, the task force will make recommendations to the U.K. government.

Former Amazon Studios Europe boss Georgia Brown is to chair the BFI’s Skills Task Force, which has been assembled to address major skills shortages in the UK film and TV sector over the next five years.

Season 3 of “The White Lotus” will reportedly take place in Thailand.

 will reportedly be set in Thailand, according to multiple outlets that have sources close to the HBO production. The reports come after creator Mike White made several comments about setting a new installment somewhere in Asia, following Maui, Hawaii, in season 1 and Sicily, Italy, in season 2. «I think it’d be fun to maybe go to a whole different continent.

It was six years ago that it closed. During that time the fabric of the Grade II listed building has detoriated badly. The fading green facade is graffiti covered, the roof badly damaged, and windows boarded up.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hybe Corp., the talent powerhouse behind K-pop sensation BTS, said on Friday that it will sell its share stake in agency rival SM Entertainment. The move would finalize Hybe’s admission of defeat in a dramatic takeover battle in which it was out-gunned by Korean tech leader Kakao Corp. Hybe initially bought a 14.8% stake in SM in February from SM’s founder and K-pop pioneer Lee Soo-man. Hybe expected to be able to buy the remaining 3% tranche held by Lee according to agreed conditions and then launched an open offer to other shareholders to buy a further 15%. But SM’s management opposed Hybe’s quasi-takeover and harnessed Kakao and its subsidiary Kakao Entertainment with a range of measures. These included a content distribution deal and the sale of newly issued shares and bonds to the Kakao pair.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Tencent Music Entertainment grew its 2022 profits by 21% to $533 million (RMB3.68 billion), helped by cost cutting and a growing subscription base. It achieved this despite a 9% decrease in revenues to $4.1 billion (RMB28.3 billion). The group, which is backed by Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent and has stock market listings on the New York Stock Exchange and in Hong Kong, is China’s largest digital music outfit and controls large equity stakes in Spotify and (in a consortium with Tencent) Universal Music Group. Tencent Music’s own operations divide loosely into two clusters: mass market music streaming, with paid-for and free tiers; and “social entertainment,” including karaoke and other derivative products.

K-pop collective Balming Tiger have shared their thoughts on the current K-pop industry.Last week, Balming Tiger performed at SXSW’s Tiger Den event, where they spoke to Rolling Stone about what K-pop is in their view and their hopes for the future of Korean music.“In our opinion, [K-pop] is not a genre because, in K-pop, there’s R&B, hip-hop and everything. So, you can’t really specify what genre it is.

The “Joy Ride” trailer is out now and certainly will take you for one.

NCT 127‘s ‘Limitless’.NCT 127 and its labels SM Entertainment and Universal Music Group have teamed up with Z2 Comics – which has worked with other musicians including Weird Al Yankovic and Gorillaz – on the new original graphic novel ‘NCT 127: Limitless’.The graphic novel shares its title with the boyband’s 2017 single ‘Limitless’ and will be “presented in the manhwa format”, according to the Z2 Comics website. The novel is set to follow in the boyband in a “reality-crossing mystery” that will take place in both the real world and “new, surreal dreamscape” as they prepare for a sold-out concert in New York.‘NCT 127: Limitless’ will be available in 10 different hardcovers – one for each active member of the boyband, alongside a general cover with the full group – starting from US$21.99.

RM, also a member of the boyband BTS, has opened up about K-pop’s pursuit of perfection and how its viewed in the West.On a recent trip to Spain, RM took the time to speak with Spanish newspaper El País, where he was asked about whether the pursuit of youth, perfection and overachievement in K-pop is characteristic of Korean culture as a whole.“In the West, people just don’t get it,” RM replied. “Korea is a country that has been invaded, razed to the ground, torn in two.

Jeff Benjamin The past year has seen the K-pop industry expanding into everything from ETFs to Broadway, and today, March 15, marks its leap into the comic and graphic novel world: Top group NCT 127 has teamed up with Z2 Comics alongside Universal Music Group and its Korean label SM Entertainment for “NCT 127: Limitless,” an original graphic novel from the act to mark the first officially licensed K-pop print comic. With its title taken from the group’s 2017 single of the same, “Limitless” is both a hardcover and deluxe hardcover manhwa (a general term from South Korea for comic books and graphic novels with a distinct, detailed artistic style) to share a multiverse-hopping, reality-blurring tale of NCT 127 rehearsing for a sold-out stadium show in New York City.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Fly Me to the Moon,” a work-in-progress from Hong Kong, dominated the prizes presented at the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum project market. It collected five awards and was invited to continue its journey at Cannes in May. Directed by first-time feature maker Sasha Chuk and produced by the veteran Stanley Kwan, the film tells the tale of a pair of sisters moving from Hunan to Hong Kong in the 1990s. They are faced with an identity crisis, poverty and their father’s drug addiction. It entered the market with $640,000 of its intended $705,000 production budget in place, and more than filled the gap with the prizes announced on Wednesday.

EXCLUSIVE: Drift director Anthony Chen is gearing up to direct his first US-set project, Heartbeat: A New York Story, about the rarely-told experiences of the Asian gay community during the AIDS epidemic in 1980s New York.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean tech giant Kakao has gained the upper hand in the battle for control of K-pop agency SM Entertainment, after HYBE Corp., the firm behind music idols BTS, said Sunday that it had called off its takeover bid. SM is the second largest talent Korean music talent firm and is behind music acts including Super M, Aespa, BoA and Red Velvet, Girls’ Generation, H.O.T., EXO, Super Junior, SHINee and NCT Dream. HYBE said on Sunday that it will “discontinue the acquisition process […] after observing that the market has been showing signs of overheating due to competition with both Kakao and Kakao Entertainment,” something that it said could “damage shareholder value.”

Queens of K-pop. The girl group TWICE has continued to dominate the music industry, both in Asia and around the world.

TWICE has dropped their new album and we also have new photos of the group!

The K-Pop world is currently going through one of its biggest ever corporate dramas, with SM Entertainment, the label of BoA, Girls Generation, EXO and Super Junior, fighting off what its management is describing as a hostile takeover from its rival HYBE, home of BTS. 

NewJeans swept the K-pop categories at this year’s Korean Music Awards, beating out popular contemporaries such as (G)I-DLE, LE SSERAFIM, IVE and more.The quintet took home the awards for both Best K-pop Album and Best K-pop Song, with their self-titled debut EP and the hit song ‘Attention’ respectively. In addition, the girl group also clinched the trophy for Rookie of the Year, besting fellow K-pop acts LE SSERAFIM and IVE, among others.Meanwhile, the biggest winner of the night was DJ and producer 250 – real name Lee Ho-hyung – who took home four awards: Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, Best Electronic Song, and Best Electronic Album.