Byun Hee-bong, Korean Actor in Multiple Boon Joon Ho Films, Dies at 81

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Disney has given a green light to a second season of Japanese drama -horror series “Gannibal.” Set in a fictional Japanese village, season one of Gannibal saw recently relocated police officer Agawa Daigo arrive in his new home a broken man. Wrestling with his guilt over an event that traumatized his daughter, things started off promisingly for the new arrival before a series of alarming events quickly led Agawa to the horrifying realization that something was deeply wrong with the villagers and the mysterious Goto family.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Ozu Yasujiro, the leading Japanese film director behind classics including “Tokyo Story” and “Late Spring,” has had his double birth and death anniversaries – Ozu died in 1963 on the day of his 60th birthday, a little more than a year after the release of his last film “An Autumn Afternoon” – celebrated throughout 2023 at places as varied as the Cannes Film Festival, Los Angeles’ Margaret Herrick Library and the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute. But it falls to October’s Tokyo International Film Festival to put on this year’s biggest and most comprehensive reconstruction of Ozu’s surprisingly varied career. Working in conjunction with the National Film Archive of Japan, the festival will present an extensive retrospective that covers almost all the films that Ozu directed (TIFF/NFAJ Classics: Ozu Yasujiro Week) from Oct. 24-29. Ozu spent his entire career, from camera assistant in 1923 to renown director in 1962, as an employee of major Japanese studio Shochiku, with all the advantages and disadvantages such an arrangement brought. While Ozu is best known for his stripped-down dramas, often centered on family relationships, sometimes troubled or contentious, involving parents and young or grown-up children, many hinging on questions of marriage, generational misunderstandings or the loneliness of the elderly, the director’s register may not entirely have been of his own choosing. “The apparent consistency of the post-war films surely owes as much to this production situation as to Ozu’s aesthetic choices,” wrote critic Tony Rayns in a recent Sight & Sound portrait.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Steven Yeun has bucked stereotypes and carved a new niche as sexy Asian leading man with his roles in “Burning” and “Beef.” Justin Chon transitioned from a supporting role in “Twilight” to directing “Gook,” “Jamojaya” and half of Apple TV+’s “Pachinko.” And Busan-born Daniel Dae Kim has expanded from “Lost” and “Hawaii” to becoming one of Hollywood’s leading producers. The stateside successes of Korean-born and Korean American talent are growing and are worth celebrating. But the Busan International Film Festival’s planned party is being dialed down a notch under the impact of the twin writers’ and SAG Actors strikes in the U.S. Busan’s ‘Special Program in Focus: Korean Diasporic Cinema’ will go ahead with a screening schedule including six films, public talk sessions that include Oscar-winning actor Youn Yuh-jung, Lee Isaac Chung, director of Oscar-winning film “Minari,” and John Cho, the Seoul-born “Star Trek” and “Searching” star.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Paramount+ streaming service will launch in Japan in December as a free-of-charge addition to cable and internet provider J:COM’s platform and to pay-TV service Wowow. Paramount+ originals including “Tulsa King,” “Mayor of Kingstown” and “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” will be available at the launch of the service and for the first time in Japan. Japan will be the second country in East Asia where the service becomes available, following a launch in South Korea in June last year.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Filming is now underway in Australia on “Desert King,” a neo-western drama series for Netflix that is positioned to be one of the streamer’s iconic prestige productions in the Asia-Pacific region. The story revolves around money and power in Australia’s harsh Outback regions with filming locations in the remote Northern Territory and near Adelaide, South Australia. When the world’s largest cattle station is left without a clear successor, generational clashes threaten to tear the Lawson family apart. Sensing this once great dynasty is in decline, the outback’s most powerful factions – rival cattle barons, desert gangsters, Indigenous elders and billionaire miners – move in for the kill,” says Netflix by way of a synopsis. While describing the six-part series as “one of the largest local screen productions filmed in both the [Northern] Territory and South Australia,” and “an extraordinary cast,” the streamer has not disclosed the identities of any cast. Directed by Greg McLean (“La Brea,” “Wolf Creek”), the show is a joint production between Easy Tiger and Ronde.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japanese comedian Shinagawa Hiroshi has been set as the director of “Among the Dead,” the first project flowing from the co-production and co-financing venture between U.S.-based People of Culture Studios and Japan’s Yoshimoto Kogyo. The previously-announced project is an English-language, found footage zombie movie in which, following an apocalypse of the undead, one emotionally unstable man abandons friends and family to go live among the few remaining zombies before they’re all gone. The screenplay was written by father/daughter duo, Andy Cosby (“Hellboy,” “2 Guns” “Eureka”) and Charlie Danger Cosby, collectively known as Midnight Pizza. Other writing credits go to Brian Caldirola, Patrick Hasson and Juan Carlos Saizarbitoria. Shinagawa is one-half of the comedy duo Shinagawa Shoji, alongside Tomoharu Shoji, and has a considerable acting filmography in his own right including “Kantoku Kansen,” “Deadman Inferno,” “One Third,” and “Drop.” Shinagawa additionally served as director, writer, and starred in the 2011 comedy-drama “Slapstick Brothers,” which won a Citizen’s Choice Award for feature film and an award from the Japanese Academy for rookie of the year.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Alibaba Pictures, the separately-listed film investment and distribution unit of China’s tech giant Alibaba behind recent box office hit “Lost in the Stars,” is to buy Damai. The target company is a major provider of live entertainment in the country that is currently controlled by the Alibaba parent company. The transaction is valued at $167 million, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday, and will be paid for by the issue of new Alibaba Pictures shares. Damai is involved in concerts, musical festivals, live house performances, plays, sports events and exhibitions in China.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japan’s Dean Fujioka (“Fullmetal Alchemist,” “The Man From The Sea”) and the U.K.’s Callum Woodhouse (“All Creatures Great and Small,” “The Durrells”) are set to star in “Orang Ikan,” a WWII-set creature horror film. The picture is scripted by Singapore and Indonesia-based Mike Wiluan (“Buffalo Boys,” HBO series “Grisse”) who will also direct the picture from next month. International rights to “Orang Ikan” have been picked up by London-based SC Films International, which will give the project its sales launch at the Busan festival and accompanying market next month. Set in the Pacific, 1942, a Japanese ship transports prisoners of war to occupied territories as slave labor.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief A+E Networks is continuing its investment in Korean entertainment content with “A Good Day to Be a Dog,” a fantasy romantic comedy that will upload from Oct. 11. Within Korea, the show will play on public broadcaster MBC and Lifetime Korea, releasing at the rate of one episode per week, every Wednesday.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Cobweb,” the Kim Jee-woon-directed satire that debuted at Cannes this year, has been cleared for theatrical release in its native Korea later this month. On Monday it saw off an injunction that sought to derail its hometown debut. The film is a tongue in cheek tribute to the Korean movies of the 1970s and plays partly as a film within a film, jumping from color to black and white as it does so. It stars Song Kang-ho (“Parasite,” “Broker”) as director Kim, who needs just two more days of reshoots to craft a new ending to his latest film (also called “Cobweb”) so that it will no longer be the trashy potboiler everyone thought he was making.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief ‘Expendables 4’ narrowly took top place at the mainland China box office on a quiet weekend preceding the National Day holiday season at the end of the month. “A Haunting in Venice” opened outside the top five. Data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway shows “Expendables 4” earning $10.9 million (RMB78.6 million) over its debut weekend.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Two Hollywood new releases, “A Haunting in Venice” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem” failed to make much of an impression on the South Korean box office in their opening weekend. Instead, local fantasy drama “Sleep” headed the chart for a second time. “Sleep” earned $2.38 million in its second weekend, a creditably modest 20% weekend-on-weekend decline, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean crime-action webtoon “Knuckle Girl” is being adapted as an original film production for Amazon’s Prime Video. It is structured as a Korea-Japan co-venture. The narrative revolves around a promising woman boxer, Ran, who takes on school bullies and participates in illegal bouts.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Michael McGrath, a stage and film actor who earned a Tony Award for his role in 2012 musical “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” has died. He was 65. He died at home in Bloomfield, New Jersey on Thursday, according to his publicist.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Tabu-starring spy thriller, “Khufiya” has been set as the opening title of the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (Oct. 11-15).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief That the Toronto world premiere of “The Movie Emperor” is sponsored by high-end home appliance manufacturer Dyson is deliciously and understatedly ironic. In the movie, innocuous-seeming domestic equipment — from the humble suitcase to floor sweeping robots — run quietly amok.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Oscar-winning Korean actor Youn Yuh-jung (“Minari,” “Pachinko”) will headline the Actors’ House section of the upcoming Busan International Film Festival, it was announced on Thursday. Introduced in 2021, Actors’ House is a special series that connects audiences and film enthusiasts with iconic actors from the current generation through its in-depth discussions. “There’s much anticipation to hear her words of wisdom, as she’s known for her insightful observations,” said the festival. Others this year include: Han Hyo-joo, Song Joong-ki and Korean-American actor and author John Cho.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Top actor Asher Keddie will co-produce and star opposite David Wenham in Paramount+ Australia’s freshly-commissioned “Fake” drama-thriller series. Keddie has a long TV career with recent credits including “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart,” “Nine Perfect Strangers” and “Stateless.” Her movie credits include smaller roles in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and eccentric comedy “Rams.” Wenham’s filmography includes “SeaChange,” “Elvis,” “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers & The Return of the King.” “Fake” follows Keddie’s character, a smart and brilliant writer who thinks she has found her ideal match when she meets a successful rancher, portrayed by Wenham, on a dating app. But after she commits, she discovers that her boyfriend isn’t all he has led her to believe. The show is inspired by the book “Fake” by Stephanie Wood and was created for television by renown screenwriter, Anya Beyersdorf with award-winner director, Emma Freeman (“Secret City,” “Glitch,” “The Newsreader”). The eight- part series is produced by Kindling Pictures’ Imogen Banks (“Safe Home,” “Offspring”) and Emelyne Palmer (“Safe Home,” “RFDS”).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Organizers of the San Sebastian Film Festival said on Wednesday that they would proceed with scheduled screenings of the film “No Me Ilame Ternera,” despite calls for it to be withdrawn. According to objectors the film has connections to terrorism. Festival organizers said that they were aware of – but had not received – a letter supposedly signed by 514 people, asking for the previously selected film to be withdrawn from the festival. “We do not share their opinion that the film ‘No me llame Ternera’ should be withdrawn from the program of this coming edition of the festival for having Josu Urrutikoetxea as its protagonist and the fact that he held a very high position within the terrorist group, ETA,” the festival said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Indian channels aggregator, Tata Play Binge, is soon to incorporate Apple TV+, a first-of-its-kind collaboration for Apple TV+ in India. The move means that series such as “Ted Lasso,” “Shrinking,” “Silo,” “Hijack,” “Foundation,” “Tehran,” “Servant,” “Platonic,” “Severance,” “The Morning Show,” “Bad Sisters,” “Slow Horses” and “Prehistoric Planet,” and Apple Original Films including “CODA” and “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse,” “Ghosted,” and the recently premiered “The Beanie Bubble” will be available on the platform.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japan has unveiled details of a location production incentive scheme that it hopes will attract more film and TV shoots to the island nation. The scheme offers reimbursement of up to 50% of qualifying expenditure in Japan, with an upper limit of JPY1 billion ($6.4 million) on the disbursement. The scheme is the product of the Ministry of Economy, Trade Industry and two agencies, the Visual Industry Promotion Organization, described as the program operator, and the Japan Film Commission, described as the program coordinator. The scheme is open to “large-scale international film and television projects.” These must have either minimum direct production spending in Japan of $3.2 million or, in the case of projects distributed in ten or more countries, have Japanese production spend higher than $1.1 million. Additionally, all projects must fulfil four other criteria: benefit to the Japanese content industry through employment or use of studios; shoot in Japan; promote the location where the filming took place; help the global appeal of Japanese works. Significantly, the guidelines make no reference to the eligibility of post-production or visual effects work conducted in Japan.