Busan Talking Points: Korean Box Office Blues; Netflix Effect & Southeast Asia Rising
It’s been far too long since I sent out an edition of Streamlined, thanks to a crazy travel schedule with trips to Manila and Jakarta, followed by back-to-back festivals. I’ve been pumping it out for Deadline, but taking a moment here to summarise some recent impressions from festivals and markets – first Busan, touching on a few trends in the East Asian film industries, then a second newsletter looking at Pingyao and mainland China.
As it’s been so long since the last newsletter (and such a busy time in the global film and streaming industries) the links round-up is crazy long, so I’m splitting it into categories across a few different newsletters. This edition includes a round-up of the biggest production, corporate and ‘cancelled’ stories, including recent Middle East festival cancellations.
We were halfway through Busan when the news about the Israel-Hamas war broke and already this tragedy is having a ripple effect across the global content industries. Everything has become politics in these troubled times, but we can only hope that culture and ‘content’, whatever that word means, will remain one way to keep communication and mutual understanding alive.
