Filmart 2026: China, Hong Kong & The Future Of Content

Liz Shackleton

24 Mar 2026 — 9 min read

Filmart's standee in the HKCEC lobby is a popular spot for selfies

This edition of Streamlined is coming to you from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in Southwest China, the latest stop on my digital nomad tour – more on both China and my nomad life later.

Everyone I’ve met so far in Chengdu has been very friendly, but I do feel that they’re looking at me as if I’m the village idiot as I stumble through my rusty Chinese and fumble with various apps and high-tech devices. Now I know what it feels like to be an immigrant from a developing country landing in a developed country, with limited language skills, and with my eyes boggling at the fancy malls and electric cars.

Anyway, this newsletter is focusing on Filmart, which took place in Hong Kong last week (March 17-20), along with a round-up of Filmart production news, while the next will catch up on the Eid holiday box office in various territories, as well as providing a round-up of Filmart sales news.

AI, Microdrama & Political Tension: Are These The Worst Of Times For Asian Cinema?

So yes Filmart was busy. It wasn’t back to pre-pandemic levels of busy as the breathless Western trades may be telling you, but it wasn’t a wash-out either. Filmart’s advantage is the fact that Hong Kong is centrally located in Asia, so it’s relatively cheap for buyers from mainland China and Southeast Asia to reach. Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), which organises Filmart, says that around 30% of buyers are from Hong Kong, 60% from the rest of Asia and 10% from outside the region. Many of those Asian buyers may not be travelling to other markets this year, especially if the US and Israel continue their attacks on Iran.

On the exhibitor front, Filmart now feels more mainland Chinese than ever, with China and Hong Kong accounting for 42% of exhibitors, but with a markedly reduced presence for Hong Kong companies, which used to dominate the front of the trade show floor with elaborate booths. This year, I could only see Media Asia and Mei Ah Entertainment on the front row, and while other Hong Kong companies had smaller booths further back in the market, some didn’t exhibit at all and were organising meetings and dinners off-site.

As some of those booths can cost the budget of a small film to build, it makes perfect sense to decline if you don’t think you’re going to cover your costs on sales. Filling most of the space in the HKCEC hall were huge pavilions hosted by mainland Chinese provinces (including Sichuan which had a standing room only promotional event).

While it was sad to see their reduced physical presence, it soon became apparent that Hong Kong companies still have some big splashy projects in the pipeline. Edko Films held a launch event for police action thriller Cold War 1994, the first installment in a two-part prequel to a pair of hit films, which features appearances by just about every major Hong Kong star still working; while Entertaining Power and Media Asia are planning a sequel to Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In, set to star Raymond Lam and Terrance Lau (but not Japanese actor Takuya Kimura due to political tensions); and PCCW was launching premium series The Season, described as a “champagne-fueled revenge drama” and starring Jessie Mei Li, Chris Pang, Karena Lam, Celina Jade, Toby Stephens and Anson Lo.

Edko Films 'Cold War 1994' launch event — **Edko Films' 'Cold War 1994' launch event**

The Hong Kong industry also had a couple of big hits at the end of 2025 and start of 2026 with One Cool Group’s sci-fi action adventure Back To The Past and Edko Films’ comedy drama Night King. But on the whole, the industry continues to go through difficult times with local box office down a further 15% to a 14-year-low of $145m in 2025. Hong Kong’s government, to its credit, is pumping funding into the local industry, supporting a wide range of projects including first-time filmmakers, animation and international co-productions. I moderated a case study for award-winning animation Another World, Hong Kong’s highest-grossing local film last year, which revealed that the government’s seed funding was essential in triggering the interest of other investors in the film.

The irony of all this is that Hong Kong producers and filmmakers – just like producers right across the region – recognise that the only way forward in this distressed global theatrical market is to collaborate on cross-border co-productions. But as Hong Kong’s government is increasingly in step with mainland China’s government, and as Beijing keeps falling out with its neighbours in the Pacific Rim, the political tensions could potentially create issues for some projects. Japanese content is currently soft banned in China, while a decade-long prohibition on Korean content remains in place. Taiwanese content is not technically banned but it’s difficult, if not downright impossible, to combine Chinese and Taiwanese funding if any government subsidies are involved. And so it continues..

On the other hand, there are signs that Hong Kong producers are collaborating more with Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia, where Skop Productions and mm2 Entertainment are busy setting up co-productions with Hong Kong. And Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) had an interesting line-up of projects, including sections dedicated to genre and animation, several of which are from Hong Kong writers and directors, and highlight once again the creativity and resourcefulness of Hong Kong filmmakers.

Of course, all this creative effort stands to be disrupted by AI, which was the focus of dozens of panels, workshops and presentations during Filmart’s AI Hub, but was also mentioned on just about every other panel, whatever the topic. While everyone is fretting about the new technology, I’m also sensing a bit of AI fatigue already, or at least the enthusiasm is waning slightly as industry practitioners start to wrestle with the wider implications of the tech. Every industry event now seems to have an AI focus where everyone talks about the need to develop guardrails, but so far, at least in Asia, there doesn’t appear to be any attempt to actually start talking about what those guardrails should entail.

In the meantime, uncertainties about where we’re heading with AI, mircrodrama and the increasing fragmentation of the market is making investors in traditional feature film content more cautious than ever. “We're at the worst of times for cinema” said Hong Kong filmmaker Peter Ho-sun Chan on a panel about international co-production, although he also noted that AI is mostly a threat for generic big-budget filmmaking, and that filmmakers could retreat into the auteur space, which is less likely to be impacted.

I also liked the comments that Another World producer Polly Yeung made about AI, during the case study on the film, in which she noted that it can accelerate part of the process during pre-production, in particular concept art and pre-visualisation, but there are areas where it should not be used. “The part I’m really very hesitant about using AI for is storyboarding. I do believe you need to create that part by yourself. If you don’t know how to do a storyboard, then you don’t really know how to tell a story,” said Yeung.

**'Another World': handcrafted by humans**

There were also a ton of panels and announcements about microdrama, already bigger in revenue terms than the film and TV industry in mainland China, but there again Chinese microdrama producers are already worried about being put out of work by AI-generated vertical short films. And so, to echo Peter Ho-sun Chan’s words on the co-production panel – we’re really at a time “where nobody knows anything”, and while moderator Lorna Tee pointed out that “nobody has ever known anything”, have we ever been at a point where everything was changing at such scale and speed?

I’m in China right now to try to get my head around where all this is heading, to try to understand the future of content, and the kind of lifestyles we'll all be living in the future, and to do it from the provinces or at the coalface of modern-day China, rather than just hanging in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing. So far, judging by the bemused looks of the lovely people I’ve encountered so far in Chengdu, I’ve got a lot to learn...

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Filmart 2026: China, Hong Kong & The Future Of Content

Liz Shackleton

AI, Microdrama & Political Tension: Are These The Worst Of Times For Asian Cinema?

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MICRODRAMA NEWS:

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