Frater Asia: Last News

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Independent Chinese film distributor Road Movies has already tasted success with a succession of imported Japanese animation films. But the company says that China’s youth market is best accessed through a vastly broader strategy that embraces IP, fandom, events, retail and merchandizing. “Our aim is to be a Chinese Disney – not in scale.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The new co-production treaty signed between Japan and Italy is being touted as a significant step towards reintegrating Japan’s film production industry with those overseas countries. The agreement – signed in June and activated in August – was directly referenced on Monday by Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and has colored the programming of this week’s Tokyo International Film Festival, which includes a Nanni Moretti retrospective, closes with Marcello Mastroianni tribute film “Marcello Mio” and sees his daughter Chiara Mastroianni set as a member of the festival’s main competition jury. The treaty’s ratification also gave rise to a reception Tuesday at the Italian embassy in Tokyo’s Tamachi district. “Tonight’s reception is more than a celebration — it is a call to action.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Youth romance film “She Taught Me Serendipity” which has its world premiere in competition on Tuesday at the Tokyo International Film Festival, has also enjoyed its first overseas rights sales. The film was licensed to South Korea’s NK Entertainment and to France’s Art House. Rights are represented by Tokyo-based Free Stone Productions. A release in Japan is scheduled for 2025. The debut romance novel of exceptional comic Fukutoku Shusuke (“Jaru Jaru”) comes to life in an adaptation by director Ohku Akiko.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hong Kong-based sales firm Cappu Films will use TIFFCOM, the rights market attached to the Tokyo International Film Festival, to launch world sales activities on two films that were recently at the Busan festival. Psychological thriller “Waterdrop,” was winner of two awards at the Busan festival earlier this month while crime comedy “So It Goes” was competitor in the Jiseok Award section. Cappu was founded by independent filmmaker Janice Woo in 2018 and has offices in Hong Kong, Beijing and Los Angeles. It focuses on rising filmmakers and genre films and television with global appeal and has activities that that span international sales and distribution.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese artist and filmmaker Qiu Jiongjiong has begun production of “Fuxi,” his second feature film, following an acclaimed debut with 2021’s “A New Old Play.” The film expands on Qiu’s use of history and folklore and uses food as a through-line to explore a narrative that blends myths, legends, literature and folk tales. The title is a blend of the Chinese words for ‘food’ and ‘joy’ and the setting is a circus tent where a ragtag film crew is busy shooting a gourmet movie. The narrative is told in four chapters, through four festivities and tells a tale that that involves the living, the dying, the dead, and the very long dead.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief ‘After the Quake,’ a film adaptation of a Murakami Haruki story collection, has been picked up by Japan’s Bitters End for international rights sales. Directed by Inoue Tsuyoshi (“Amachan”) and produced by “Drive My Car” producer Yamamoto Teruhisa, the film is based on four of the six short stories in Murakami’s 2000 book of the same title. The stories explore the complex aftermath of Japan’s earthquakes and other global crises.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Crunchyroll, the Sony-owned anime streaming service, is being launched in Australia as an add-on to the Prime Video platform. Crunchyroll will be offered at two membership tiers Fan-level (AUD $10.99, $7.25) or Mega Fan (AUD $13.99, US$9.20), both of which allow customers to stream the entire Crunchyroll library ad-free, while enjoying new episodes shortly after the release in Japan. The library currently stands at some 24,000 hours of content 46,000 episodes and more than 1,300 series and films.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief With strong accents on mainland Chinese directors, Japan’s next generation of filmmaking talent and a new women’s empowerment section, this week’s Tokyo International Film Festival can lay reasonable claim to being a discovery festival – as well as one catering to a large public in the Japanese capital. “We have a strong Chinese-language presence in the competition section, three mid-career Japanese directors in competition, a really super World Focus section and a new Women’s section,” Ichiyama Shozo, the festival’s programming director, told Variety.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Venom: The Last Dance” delivered on its pre-release buzz in mainland China with an opening weekend that was the second biggest this year by a Hollywood movie. The third film in the “Venom” trilogy earned RMB221 million ($31.1 million) in the conventional Friday-Sunday definition of the weekend in China, according to consultancy firm Artisan Gateway.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Venom: The Last Dance” waltzed to a weekend win in South Korea, but failed to shake the country’s box office out of its recent torpor. The third film in the “Venom” trilogy earned $2.66 million over the Friday to Sunday period, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). That represented a dominant 62% market share. Over the five days since its opening on Wednesday, it built up a cumulative of $4.13 million. At that pace, the new film will struggle to overtake the $15.2 million total earned by “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” which was released in 2021 during the worst of the COVID pandemic. That is indicative of a downturn at the Korean box office which is beginning to look like it has become structural.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Kim Soo-mi, a veteran female actor who had been active in the South Korean film and TV industries for over 50 years, died on Friday. Korean media reported that Kim was found unconscious at her home in Seoul and was transported to Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital at 8am Friday, Korean local time.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Two films by women directors, Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light” and Dea Kulumbegashvili’s “April” lead the nominations for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Both films will compete in five categories – best film, best director, best screenplay, best cinematography and best performance – it was revealed Wednesday in a nominations announcement. Also competing for best film are Yoko Yamanaka’s Tokyo-set story of a young woman’s mental illness, “Desert of Namibia” (Japan); Neo Sora’s future Tokyo tale of perilous social surveillance “Happyend” (Japan, U.S.); and Jiang Xiaoxuan’s “To Kill a Mongolian Horse” (Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, U.S.), a portrait of a Mongolian horseman turned performer, based on a true story. Four of the five films nominated for best film are from female directors, and in an APSA first, all five best film contenders are first or second features. In addition to Kapadia, Kulumbegashvili and Jiang, the nominees for best director include Tato Kotetishvili for “Holy Electricity,” alongside veteran French Cambodian auteur Rithy Panh for “Meeting with Pol Pot.” For the first time since the acting category became an ungendered best performance award, all five nominations go to women.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief New York-based Obluda Films has boarded the long-in-production sci-fi detective film “Resurrection,” being directed by mainland Chinese auteur Bi Gan. Obluda will join as co-producer and co-financier of the picture that counts mainland pop star-turned-leading actor Jackson Yee and Taiwan’s Shu Qi, as the lead cast. Another New York-based indie producer Jonathan Daniel Brown, of Party Crasher Films, will also join the partnership for the upcoming film. After completing part of its shooting schedule, “Resurrection” is set to resume filming in the fourth quarter of this year.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Production has begun on “Tangata Pai,” a Warner Bros. Discovery-backed drama that claims to be the first primetime series in which 30% of the dialog will be in the Maori language. The eight-part series tells the stories of five people whose worlds collide when a bomb is detonated at a peaceful Māori protest against a license to mine a sacred site.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Smash hit Korean reality show “Culinary Class Wars” has been renewed for a second season by Netflix. The show pits a total of 100 renowned chefs and undiscovered cooking talents against each other in a culinary battle for the ultimate taste. Mounted on a large scale and running to 12 episodes, the contest at times resembles a sports event.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Live coverage of the 2024 “League of Legends” World Championship esports series will be shown in some 200 cinema screens in mainland China. Kicking off on Thursday with the quarterfinals, the events will be shown exclusively in Imax theaters operate by Wanda, China’s largest cinema chain. The quarterfinals will run Oct. 17-20.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Dwayne Johnson-starring Christmas-themed comedy adventure film “Red One” is set for a theatrical release in mainland China. The film is directed by Jake Kasdan and sees Santa Claus (code name: Red One) kidnapped. To save Christmas, the North Pole’s head of security (Johnson) must team up with the world’s most infamous bounty hunter (Chris Evans) in a globe-trotting, action-packed mission.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Warner Bros. Discovery has confirmed that its streaming service Max will launch in seven territories in Southeast Asia next month. From Nov.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Established only six months ago, Australian premium TV production outfit Lantern Pictures has struck a first-look content supply deal with global distributor Fremantle. Lantern Pictures was established by multi-award winning writer and showrunner Sarah Lambert – the name behind critically acclaimed and popular series “Lambs of God,” “Love Child” and Amazon’s “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart” – director Jane Manning and TV executive Andrew Lambert. At launch, the company said that its mission is to be Australia’s first showrunner-centric, female-focused production company. “We’re launching a creative partnership between the two companies, one that we’re very excited about, which gives us access to the larger of corporate entity of Fremantle, it’s an alliance of similarly minded creatives and its distribution network,” Andrew Lambert told Variety. “Fremantle and Lantern are creatively aligned so this partnership feels natural and right.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Stuck in a dark and mysterious neighborhood with no memory of how they got there, six strangers will have to piece together their forgotten pasts to escape in “Light Shop,” an eight-part supernatural mystery launching on the Disney+ streaming service from December. The show is an adaptation of the “Light Shop” webtoon by Kang Full, who is sometimes credited as the father of Korean web comics and was creator of the Disney+ hit show “Moving.” Kang Full penned the adapted screenplay. Kim Hiewon directs the series.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” took second place at the mainland China box office over the latest weekend, leading off a season of re-releases that will encompass the full “Harry Potter” franchise. The weekend’s top-ranked film was “The Volunteers: The Battle of Life and Death” which took RMB77.4 million ($10.9 million) in its second full weekend in Chinese theaters, according to data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway. Since releasing on Sept. 30, in time to capture the full National Day holiday period, the Chen Kaige-directed film has earned $139 million.