KPop Demon Hunters; India Embraces AI; Busan's ACFM Tackles Market Problems
It’s been difficult to avoid KPop Demon Hunters this week, so I’m starting with an item on this pop culture phenomenon, not least because I was surprised to read that it’s become Netflix’s most watched English-language film of all time.
As I watched the animated film on Netflix with the Korean audio (full disclosure, didn’t make it past ten minutes, not really my thing), I didn’t realise that this was an English-language movie. But after a brief investigation, discovered that it doesn’t have any Korean production partner or physical connection to the nation of South Korea, beyond some of the voice talent, soundtrack and themes.
Produced by Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix, the film is a wholly American production created by Korean-Canadian filmmaker Maggie Kang, who was born in Korea but moved to Canada at the age of five. She's been saying in interviews that it's the film's attention to authenticity that has made it such a success – the film is based on Korean folklore and shows many aspects of Korean culture – but avoids the missteps of Disney films like Mulan by getting all the details of Korean food, art and clothing completely correct. “I didn’t do it alone. There were many Koreans on our team who checked everything to make sure there were no mistakes,” Kang told the Korea Times.
And it certainly has been a huge success – with 236 million views since its June 20 release, the film has surpassed Red Notice (2021) to become the biggest title on Netflix’s all-time Most Popular English Films list. The sing-along version was released in US theatres this past weekend where it topped the chart with an estimated $19m. The songs in the film are one of the biggest elements driving its success with tracks like Golden topping the UK singles chart. While the sing-along version has already dropped on the Netflix platform globally, cinemas across Asia will no doubt be clamouring to also screen it. Talks are already underway for a sequel.
The Korean content industry has responded to this phenomenon with some bemusement. The Kpop elements appealing to a huge global fanbase are undoubtedly the reason it’s been so massive – but none of the Kpop giants like Hybe, SM, YG or JYP were involved in the making of the film, neither were any Korean film and TV studios. This might be South Korea’s Kung Fu Panda moment, reminiscent of the way the Chinese industry reacted when that 2008 Disney animation became a huge global hit using Chinese IP.
Another major animated worldwide hit this summer – Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle – is also being distributed by American companies, Sony Pictures and Crunchyroll, although in that case the film was actually produced in Japan. Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Video recently dropped an English-language spy series Butterfly, starring Daniel Dae Kim, that has a Korean setting and was filmed in Korea but is a 100% American production.
These are interesting trends in the globalisation of the content industry. With American superhero and other films flagging in their appeal in international markets, you can totally expect Hollywood to start showing up and appropriating your culture – or maybe just acquiring the global distribution rights – at least if your culture is considered mainstream and exportable. But maybe don’t expect to get a seat at that table unless you work for a North American company or grew up in North America. Trump would be proud...
SUMMER OF AI HYPE
AI is the other thing it’s been difficult to avoid this summer with headlines about the new tech just about the only thing breaking through the news cycle clutter of war, genocide, immigration panic and Trump insanity. The headlines seem to roughly fall into two camps – scary statistics claiming that recent graduates can’t find jobs as AI has replaced entry level positions, and even scarier stories about people falling in love with, or otherwise developing unhealthy relationships with, their AI chatbots.
And of course, as these Large Language Models (LLMs) are programmed to please us but are unencumbered with human morals and sensitivity – some have been encouraging their users to engage in dubious activities or even kill themselves, while X’s Grok started spouting antisemitic remarks and described itself as 'MechaHitler'. Probably not the psychological influence we need in the world right now.
On a purely economic level, some pundits are saying that we are in a period of massive stock market overvaluation, as tech giants invest billions in buying chips, building power-guzzling data centres and hiring the best talent. They warn that the bubble may be about to pop in the same way that the dotcom bust in the early 2000s derailed the global economy. Coupled with persistent inflation and Trump’s nonsensical tariffs, that's also something we probably don’t need right now.
As for the film biz, AI evangelists are already talking up and starting to deploy AI-powered production processes that are undoubtedly faster and cheaper, but nobody seems to be addressing what this will mean for local production ecosystems or content industry jobs. Streamlined will be doing more research on use cases in coming months, but I’ll just leave this here, that governments and industry associations need to start thinking about guardrails to protect their film and TV workers – especially in the face of Trump-backed US tech robber barons who will have zero qualms about annihilating your local content industries.
Although China's DeepSeek sent shock waves through Silicon Valley, the fact remains that US tech giants dominate AI – Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and to a lesser extent Apple – and these companies have already enshittified the internet for both users and clients, so there’s no reason to think they won’t do the same with LLMs and AI applications. Earlier this week, Trump threatened to impose tariffs and export restrictions on countries who use taxes, legislation and regulation to protect themselves against US big tech. The world needs a collective response to stand up to this bullying.
INDIA EMBRACES AI
Not surprisingly given its tech history, India at least is starting to develop its own AI-powered production solutions with Bengaluru-based NeuralGarage producing seamless multilingual dubbing for current Rajinikanth release Coolie and directors and producers including Shekar Kapur and Abundantia Entertainment announcing AI projects based on local tech.
As a journalist, it’s always amusing to watch PRs shoehorn the latest buzzword into a press release (many are already mentioning AI for no discernible reason, while a few years back it was blockchain and Web3 that were all over press pitches). However, I do believe that India has the tech smarts, creativity and ironically the cheap human labour necessary to do some interesting things in this space.
NeuralGarage used AI tech to produce Hindi and Telugu language dubbing that synchronises the lips and facial expressions of the performers in the Chikitu song sequence in action thriller Coolie, making it look as if the song was recorded in multiple languages. While the company is mostly working in the Indian industry, it became the first Indian company to win a pitch competition at SXSW in Austin, Texas, where it made a bunch of international contacts.
On the other hand, India is also the country most likely to commit some hideous copyright abuse in this field, as we’ve already seen with Eros International’s plans to come up with an AI-altered climax to the Tamil version of Aanand L. Rai’s 2013 romantic drama Raanjhanaa, starring Dhanush and Sonam Kapoor. At least Rai and Dhanush wasted no time in slamming this idea.
Indian filmmakers are also starting to address the opportunities and challenges of AI in more thoughtful ways. I recently watched Aranya Sahay’s Humans In The Loop about an indigenous Indian woman working as a “data labeller” training algorithms to recognise and differentiate between objects. Sahay says the film is based on real events in various indigenous regions of India, where tech companies have established backend offices for data labeling due to the lower costs.
While telling a simple, character-driven story, the film looks at how a machine learns, compared to how a human child might learn, and asks questions about the biases inherent in AI models. This tech is creating a world that will be layered on top of the real one – and so far that world is mostly English-language and does not look like the indigenous lady toiling away in the data labelling centre. Perhaps an urgent task of filmmaking right now is to find ways to redress the balance.
ACFM TACKLES MARKET PROBLEMS
A short item to finish with...obviously film and TV industries around the world are facing enormous change and challenges and only collective responses are going to help us map a sustainable future. So it’s encouraging to see that this year’s edition of Busan’s Asian Contents and Film Market (ACFM) is tackling all these issues head on.
While the festival just announced its 2025 line-up, ACFM has released details of its conference programme and new initiatives including ‘The A’, Innovision and Doc Square. ‘The A’ will discuss government and industry policy through a series of conferences, as well as release an industry report providing box office, policy and technology updates for 17 Asian countries. Innovision is a trade show and conference programme bringing together AI, cloud and other content-related tech companies from both the US and Asia.
While the Korean market is going through a particlarly tough patch right now, all the issues to be discussed at ACFM are impacting other Asian markets to some extent. South Korea has always been a regional leader in terms of developing policy and some useful industry practices, but dropped the ball somewhat during the political unrest and right-wing governments of recent years. Hopefully, under the more left-leaning Lee Jae Myung administration it can get back on track.
Liz Shackleton
Streamlined's wrap-up report from last year's Busan & ACFM
IN THE TRADES:
AWARDS SEASON:
OSCARS 2026: Best International Feature Submissions
FIPRESCI Inspired Pan-African AFP Critics Prize Launches
PRODUCTION NEWS:
Netflix releases guidelines for using generative AI in productions
CANCELLED:
CURATED:
Busan Film Festival Unveils Inaugural Competition Line-Up, Including Ten World Premieres
Chloé Zhao, Lee Sang-il To Receive Tokyo Film Festival’s Kurosawa Akira Award
New Zealand Fest Sees Big Audience Growth In Major Cities
RELEASED:
Japan blockbuster ‘Detective Conan: One-Eyed Flashback’ set for UK-Ireland release
Korea’s BTS Releases Four Concert Films Ahead Of Comeback
SOLD:
Annemarie Jacir’s Oscar Entry ‘Palestine 36’ Acquired by Watermelon Pictures for North America
Nadav Lapid’s satire ‘Yes’ scores multiple sales following Directors’ Fortnight premiere
Hong Kong Box Office Hit ‘Four Trails’ Lands U.K. Distribution, Set to Open Odyssey Film Festival
STREAMING UPDATES:
‘Thama,’ ‘Param Sundari’ Lead Prime Video India’s Multi-Year Maddock Films Deal
Netflix Takes New Swing With Japanese Rights to 2026 World Baseball Classic
