Korea & Japan

Autumn Markets Part One: Are We Heading Into An Era Of Over-Supply?

Liz Shackleton

13 Nov 2025 — 5 min read

Taiwan Creative Content Fest is a key event in a busy season of project markets in Asia

We need to talk about project markets, or at least reassess what is happening at these events, which undoubtedly have an important role to play, but perhaps are becoming too much of a good thing.

Streamlined attempts to publish the line-ups of all the project and pitching events in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, along with a few in Europe that have a large number of projects from these regions. At last count, we’ve published around 25 of these line-ups so far in 2025, including more than 600 projects, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t get them all. While there’s significant overlap, with many projects attending multiple markets, that’s still a huge number of projects being offered to potential investors, co-producers, distributors and festivals.

If we think back a few years to the pandemic, there was talk that project markets, as well as physical sales markets, would remain partially online, which would be more efficient and reduce CO2 emissions, but now it seems there’s more physical events than ever. Several countries that didn’t have markets before the pandemic now have their own events, each with line-ups of projects, completed films and/or series, seminars, masterclasses and networking events. Most of them take place between September and December, when you could easily move from one to the other without ever going home.

It's totally understandable that every country with a sizeable film and TV industry would want to create a financing ecosystem around those industries, and connect them to other international markets, which is what all these events do. But more than ever, I’m left wondering where the market is for all these projects. Box office is still struggling in most territories, with the exception of Vietnam and Indonesia, and the latter market already has a huge backlog of local films waiting for release. Streamers seem to be acquiring and commissioning less content than ever.

There also seems to be an over-supply of films for the festival circuit. The big five festivals for arthouse films – Rotterdam, Berlin, Cannes, Venice and Toronto – can only accommodate so many titles and the chances of breaking out if you’re not selected for one of these is slim.

Over in the US, the American Film Market (AFM) kicked off on Tuesday in Los Angeles, although many Asian companies are giving it a miss due to ongoing travel chaos and the fear of facing god knows what at LAX immigration. Reports from on the ground suggest that attendees are happy to be back in LA, after last year’s ill-starred edition in Las Vegas, but business is quiet. US buyers are saying that recent lackluster box office in North America and the hesitance of streamers is making it difficult to close deals – unless they’re already aligned with a streamer on an ongoing basis. It looks like the oversupply issue is not unique to this part of the world.

Perhaps project markets – as well as what’s left of completed product markets – could pay more attention to distribution and possible solutions. Get distributors and exhibitors to talk on panels about why box office is not coming back; what needs to happen to make it come back; how we adjust if it never comes back; why streamers have become so hesitant and what market or project conditions would encourage them to commission or buy. Perhaps event organisers have already tried to do this, and the buyers are refusing to go public (after all they have nothing to sell), but we all need this kind of intel.

As Streamlined has suggested before, perhaps government film agencies could consider support for distributors and cinemas, rather than pumping money into new projects that may never find an audience. Can AI and microdrama be leveraged to drive audiences to longer form content? Can we see some case studies on what Europe and North America have done to support the distribution sector and whether or not it worked?

Some project markets could also be more tightly curated. Bigger is not necessarily better. In an era of abundant supply and shrinking demand, buyers don’t need to be confronted with dozens and dozens of projects, especially when some of them are still at the very early stages. A smaller selection of projects that have already been packaged to a certain level would be more useful for buyers racking up the air miles between these events.

Or perhaps I’m just feeling weary and cynical after doing five markets back-to-back. As always, Streamlined is keen to hear your thoughts. While this edition has been a bit of a vent, the next will look in more depth at the international strategies being adopted by the content industries in Japan and Taiwan.

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IN THE TRADES:

Autumn Markets Part One: Are We Heading Into An Era Of Over-Supply?

Liz Shackleton

IN THE TRADES:

PROJECT MARKETS:

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