Netflix Unveils Slate Of Japanese Dating, Comedy Shows As Part Of Wider Push Into Unscripted Content Across Asia

A beloved Japanese manga is being turned into a live-action series for the very first time.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief HYBE Corp., the K-Pop powerhouse behind BTS, and the U.S.’s Geffen Records are to bring their global girl group audition efforts to Netflix as a docuseries that will launch next year. The two music companies announced the 2024 series and a companion-piece online show that kicks off on Thursday as their “The Debut: Dream Academy” moves up a gear. Having begun the selection process in November 2021 and screened some 120,000 submissions from young women hopefuls from around the world, they have now narrowed the field to just 20 candidates.

Naman Ramachandran As South Asians increasingly make their mark on the world film and TV stage, an initiative to find emerging talent from the region and propel them globally is being launched. Alongside talent from the region who are already entrenched in Hollywood, including Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Freida Pinto, in recent years several South Asian actors have appeared in international projects.

The U.S. premieres of the films Yoko, Ripple, and Tea Friends highlight the seventh Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan (ACA) Cinema Project, which will spotlight “Emerging Japanese Films” in a series set to run Sept. 26-28 at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.

Disney+ has scored the next breakout hit from Asia after “Squid Game.” Star-studded international espionage series “Moving” has become the most watched Korean original on Disney+ globally and Hulu in the U.S., based on hours streamed after seven days. In its first week since launch on Aug. 9, the series also became the most watched series on Disney+ across Asia Pacific, including in Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan – based on hours watched – and the biggest premiere on Disney+ in Korea to date, based on hours streamed in the first week since launch.

Song of the Bandits, starring Kim Nam-gil and Seohyun.Set in the 1920s, the upcoming Song of the Bandits revolves around Koreans who have escaped to the Gando region in China during the Japanese occupation. The series is led by Kim Nam-gil (Through the Darkness) and Girls’ Generation’s Seohyun (Jinxed at First).The new trailer opens with an introduction to the bandits of Gando led by Lee Yoon (played by Kim), a defected Japanese soldier who now steals and kills to protect his countrymen in the region.“Chinese land, Japanese money and Joseon’s people.

Netflix’s is getting in on Oppenheimer fever by ordering a doc about Albert Einstein’s complex relationship with Hitler, Germany and the devastating aftermath of the atomic bomb in Japan.

Netflix has renewed Indian cop drama Khakee: The Bihar Chapter for a second season and struck a wider creative partnership deal with the show’s creator, Friday Storytellers.

EXCLUSIVE: Steven Spielberg is no stranger to close encounters of the third kind.

Japan’s Tokyo Film Festival (TIFF) has revealed the official poster for its 2023 edition, which pays tribute to the country’s seminal filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu on the 120th anniversary of his birth. Check out the full poster below.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief With the global entertainment industry still rocked by the impact of streaming, the pandemic – and Hollywood’s twin strikes – the APOS conference will next month examine disruption and the responses to it from a senior executive Asian perspective. After being held virtually during the COVID era and then last year making a stop in Singapore, the conference itself will return to Bali, Indonesia, and be held 26-28 Sept.

1497 has revealed the finalists of its third annual Features Lab. See their bios below.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta has made an unusual inroad into Vietnam with reality show “Let’s Feast Vietnam,” which launched on Netflix this week in parts of Asia. The 10-episode “Let’s Feast Vietnam” (aka “Hành Trình K? Thú”) is part cooking competition and part-way travelogue. It also borrows something of the ‘reels’ short video feature that makes social media apps so addictive, in that contestants are required to produce video clips along their journey.

The Toronto International Film Festival has unveiled its Primetime programme for 2023 which includes the world premieres of Bad Boy and All the Light We Cannot See.

Netflix is clearly determined to play the major studio game of big star-driven action franchises. Extraction and its current sequel, The Gray Man (with the promise of more), Red Notice, and many others represent big screen type entertainment designed ultimately for people to watch on their couches at home. This kind of stuff, while skillfully and expensively executed still works best at IMAX rather than your living room but the streamer is convinced they will goose subscriptions so expect more of it, and movies like Heart Of Stone , a convoluted spy thriller loaded with James Bond-style action set pieces but with a wonder woman in the name of Gal Gadot in the center of it all. Taking a cue from Charlize Theron’s Netflix franchise, The Old Guard, this is a female-driven enterprise where the men, namely Jamie Dornan’s complicated bad guy, take a back seat for the most part. In fact this is a Gadot vehicle all the way.

TIFF today revealed their Centerpiece programme lineup which includes the Cannes Film Festival-winning Wim Wenders movie, Perfect Days. The festival also revealed another couple of star-driven world premieres that being Paramount’s Finestkind starring Jenna Ortega, Ben Foster and Tommy Lee Jones as well as 20th Century Studios/Hulu’s Awkwafina, Sandra Oh and Will Ferrell comedy, Quiz Lady.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Netflix is further expanding its slate of unscripted TV content from Japan, its most lucrative market in East Asia. The new shows cover the reality, variety and dating genres. “We’re excited to move into a new phase of our content strategy, ramping up our investments in unscripted and bringing new concepts to the screen.

EXCLUSIVE: In the opening scene of Netflix survival show Zombieverse, a dating couple in a bar in Seoul’s trendy Hongdae district lean in for a kiss. 

told the Los Angeles Times that attempts to arrange a meeting with Netflix — to demand that members be compensated with the same residual model as American members of SAG-AFTRA — have gone unanswered for months.“One of [Netflix’s] first priorities when entering the local market should be to establish some channel of communication with groups like us,” the country’s answer to Fran Drescher said.“But there’s no answer at all.”Residuals have recently been in the news as American actors and writers striking for fair compensation post their often insultingly meager checks, ranging from a single penny to a few dollars. As opposed to the royalties paid in broadcasting, residuals must be paid in perpetuity to actors in the United States, based on how many times their films and shows are streamed.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief A team of United Nations inspectors has said it is “deeply alarmed” by the allegations of sexual abuse that may have taken place at leading Japanese talent agency Johnny & Associates. Abuses may have involved “several hundred” talents, according to the org. The United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights began its first official visit to Japan last month and concluded 12 days of meetings and interviews last week.