Frater Asia: Last News

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Transformers One” took top spot at the China box office over its debut weekend. It was the only major title to release on an atypical Friday that precedes next week’s National Day holiday season. That also made the latest Friday-to-Sunday session the lowest-grossing weekend of the year for mainland Chinese cinemas. Released only a week after its North American debut, “Transformers One,” an animated spin-off from the “Transformers” franchise which has been enormously popular in the Middle Kingdom, earned $4.9 million, according to data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean-made crime-comedy-thriller “I, The Executioner,” a sequel to 2015 hit ‘Veteran,” continued its spree at the top of the South Korea weekend box office. It earned $3.03 million in its third full weekend session, ahead of top-ranked new release “Transformers One.” “I, The Executioner” commanded a 53% market share, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Global streaming group, Netflix has inked a partnership with “Tokyo Swindlers” director Hitoshi One. As part of the deal, Netflix will exclusively produce and distribute new series and films by One for the next five years. One made his film directorial debut in 2011 with the theatrical version of “Moteki,” which was adapted from a Japanese manga and for which he received the prize for most popular title at the 35th Japan Academy Awards.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Jeffrey Katzenberg was probably too early when he launched Quibi (short for quick bites) in early 2020. The company closed down six months later having consumed nearly $1.5 billion of capital. Fast forward four years and the global market (excluding China) for micro-dramas, or ultra short fiction content made for consumption on the go, is said to be worth $2 billion a year. It is expected to double by 2025. Like Korean webtoons, micro dramas are digitally native content, made for viewers using handheld mobile devices.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hogwarts fans in mainland China will be treated to a wide re-release of all eight “Harry Potter” films starting in mid-October. Warner Bros. Pictures, the studio behind the franchise, said that the films will pay in some 3,400 theaters across 295 cities in China.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Operating for only the third time, the Jakarta World Cinema film festival is bringing a diverse slate of global and local pictures to Indonesia’s biggest city. It kicked off in high style on Saturday with a screening of Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance.” The body horror-fantasy debuted at Cannes and has already proved a popular choice as either opening or closing film at multiple film festivals. In Jakarta, it got a reaction, extracting shrieks, gasps and applause from the opening night crowd. Earlier, in a breezy ceremony, complete with dancers replicating some of “The Substance’s” fitness moves, audiences had been told that organizers had assembled a lineup of just over a hundred titles. In a country, where cinema is popular, but a class of risk-taking indie distributors is an industry sector has yet to be fully developed, that is a significant number.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Paramount Global Content Distribution today announced a new licensing agreement with MONO in Thailand to create a Paramount+ brand extension on the streamer Monomax, scheduled to launch in November. The deal, which expands Paramount’s strategy to expand the Paramount+ brand in more ways around the world, was announced Thursday at the APOS conference in Indonesia by Lisa Kramer, president, international content licensing, global content distribution, Paramount. In some territories, such as Japan, the service is a standalone direct-to-consumer product..In others, it exists as a branded destination through licensing deals. Branded areas are currently available via Cosmote in Greece, Streamz in Belgium, MultiChoice in Africa, JioCinema in India.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Alyssa Sutherland head the cast of “The Room Below,” a psychological creature thriller film that is now shooting in Sydney, Australia. The film hails from writer-director Kurt Martin (“Moon Rock for Monday”). Production is through Byron Bay-based Lunar Pictures.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Tokyo International Film Festival has unveiled a competition section with as many Chinese titles as Japanese for its 37th edition. Announced on Wednesday the festival’s full lineup runs to a compact 110 films, culled from a huge 2,023 applications, and functions partly as discovery event, partly as a Japanese showcase and also as best-of the year international art house compendium. The 15-title competition includes Mizi Z’s “The Unseen Sister,” “Big World,” by Yang Lina and “My Friend An Delie,” by Dong Zijian from China.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Multinational streaming groups are using their increasing market strength to raise pricing and profitability in the Asia-Pacific region. The region’s many local competitors enjoy significant revenue share, but mostly lag the global giants in terms of earnings. That was one of the starkest messages to emerge from an opening address by Vivek Couto, managing partner at consultancy firm Media Partners Asia, on Wednesday, the first morning of his APOS conference in Indonesia. Global streamers are putting the screw on monetization, he said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming service will launch in five markets in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the final quarter of this year and in Australia in the first half of 2025. The rollout will require multiple business models. Max, a technologically improved platform that combines the content offerings of HBO and Discovery, has already rolled out in North America and parts of Europe and Latin America, but is only slowly arriving in the Asia-Pacific region. It launches Wednesday in Japan, in a partnership with local Japanese streamer U-Next. “In the coming weeks and months there will be many announcements,” said James Gibbons, president of APAC at Warner Bros.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Experimental music film “Pavements” and offbeat comedy “Nightbitch” are among five titles designated as ‘headliners’ of the film section on the upcoming SXSW Sydney festival. “Pavements,” which premiered in Venice, is an experimental hybrid of narrative, scripted, documentary, musical, and metatextual elements from director Alex Ross Perry about the indie rock outfit, Pavement.“Nightbitch,” which debuted in Toronto, is a darkly comedic fairy tale about a stay-at-home mother, portrayed by Amy Adams, who transforms into a dog. Others getting the gala treatment include Max & Sam Eggers’ new A24 horror “The Front Room,” starring pop star Brandy as a newly-pregnant woman facing off against her mother-in-law; “Smile 2,” by Parker Finn; and Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night,” based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of “Saturday Night Live.” “These bold, hilarious, captivating and thrilling films lead a program not just for film fans, but the tech, music, and games audiences that form the rich tapestry of the SXSW Sydney audience,” said Colin Daniels, MD, SXSW Sydney. The festival, a spin-off from the U.S. South by Southwest festival, and which shares PMC corporate ownership with Variety, is in its second year Down Under.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Carlyn Staudt, who has previously overseen the growth of Blue Ant Media’s Love Nature channel, travels to the APOS conference for the first time in her new role as the company’s EVP of global channels and streaming. Together with Jon Penn, the group’s MD for Asia Pacific, she takes stock of the corporate restructurings that include the disposal of Beach House Pictures and the establishment of a sales hub in Asia, as well as analyzing the business opportunities at a moment of industry turmoil. Staudt: I joined Blue Ant seven years ago to expand its channel offering around the globe, and launched love nature, which was at the time, a fledgling natural history service, for SVOD only.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese-produced drama film “Stand by Me” held on to top spot at the mainland China box office. Dreamworks Animation’s “The Wild Robot” enjoyed a modest third-place debut. After an almost imperceptible uplift provided a week earlier by the Mid Autumn Festival, mainland China’s theatrical business extended the slump that it has been in since the second quarter.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Local blockbuster “I The Executioner” dominated the South Korea box office for a second weekend. Its cumulative total reached $40 million after ten days on release. The film, a sequel to 2015 crime comedy drama “The Veteran,” “I, The Executioner” released a week earlier with little serious opposition from new release titles. Those conditions held true in the film’s second weekend, and the film’s first non-holiday frame. Between the latest Friday and Sunday, the film earned $6.63 million, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Socially-conservative Japan seems to be in no rush to follow its neighbors in East Asia and roll out the pink carpet to the LGBTQ community or recognize same-sex marriages. But where the Japanese entertainment industry is slowly heading, courts and municipal authorities are following. The untroubled July arrival of the country’s first same-sex dating reality show “The Boyfriend,” on streamer Netflix, may be another sign that normalization of queerness in Japan is on the way.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Sony-owned anime company Crunchyroll has acquired North American and select international theatrical rights for “Solo Leveling – ReAwakening.” The presentation represents a recap of the “Solo Leveling” anime series’ hit first season and a sneak peek of the first two episodes of the second season. Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment will bring “Solo Leveling -ReAwakening” to theaters in the U.S. and Canada on Dec.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Territory,” Netflix’s Down Under answer to “Yellowstone,” has unveiled a trailer ahead of its online premiere on Oct. 24.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Oscar-winning duo Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe (“Two Distant Strangers,” HBO’s “BS High”) are to direct and executive produce “Sk8 or Die: The Lee Ralph Story.” The upcoming series is an anthology exploring the wild and highly unique life of Lee Ralph, a former pro skateboarder turned folk hero and recluse. Vinnie Bennett (“Fast & Furious 9: The Fast Saga,” “Whina,” “Human Traces”) and Oscar-nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes (“FBI: Most Wanted,” “Whale Rider,” “Game of Thrones”) are set to lead the cast, with Bennet portraying Ralph and Castle-Hughes playing his sister and partner in crime Kim Ralph. The six-part show was hatched by New Zealand-based production company Tavake (“Madam”). Skateboarding ace Tony Hawk and “Jackass” touring comedian and skate culture legend, Steve-O are on board to executive produce.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Agent 86,” a rare China-Tunisia coproduction film, will have its world premiere on Friday in Tunisia, ahead of a commercial release in Tunisian theaters from Sept. 25. The film is pitched as “a fast-paced action thriller following an international Special Task Force that comes together to fight cross border drug trafficking after a devastatingly addictive drug named Devil’s Breath goes on sale in Hong Kong.” The driving force behind the movie is Tunisian actor-director Bassem Khayati, who produced and directed the film and also appears as its co-lead. Khayati is a veteran of several Jackie Chan movies including “Dragon Blade,” “Kung Fu Yoga” and “Vanguard,” as well as action roles in numerous other Chinese titles including “Fox Hunting,” “Mojin, The Lost Legend” and “Go Away Mr.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Revenues from India’s premium video-on-demand sector surged by 38% to generate $1.04 billion in the first half of this year, compared with $760 million in the first half of 2023. Local content, especially live sports, were the dominant programming categories, across the country’s ad-supported (AVOD), freemium and paid subscription (SVOD) services, according to a new report. Using data collected by the AMPD passive measurement system, consultancy firm Media Partners Asia, said that 8 trillion minutes of content were streamed in India between January and June.YouTube dominated the Indian streaming landscape, capturing 92% of all online video consumption, while premium platforms accounted for the remaining 8%.