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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Japan’s Asahi Broadcasting Group, creative powerhouse Diturn Korea and Asia-based content incubator Empire of Arkadia have joined forces to co-develop “100,” a community-based music entertainment format. The show will be distributed globally by EOA and will officially launch at MIP London (Feb. 23-24, 2025), by which time the first two iterations of the format will […]

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. Semifinals will play […]

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 […]

Warner Bros. Discovery has confirmed that its streaming service Max will launch in seven territories in Southeast Asia next month. From Nov. 19, it will be available in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand as well as Taiwan and Hong Kong. Max will offer a choice of different plans. Full details about pricing will be […]

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 […]

LIGHTING UP TIME 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 […]

“One Piece,” the long running and iconic Japanese animation series, is to take a six-month hiatus, effective immediately. Toei Animation, the company behind the show, said that the series will take a break after Sunday’s Episode 1122 and return in April 2025 with fresh episodes from the “Egghead Arc.” No explanation for the abrupt break […]

“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 […]

Korean-made crime-comedy-thriller “I The Executioner,” a sequel to 2015 hit ‘Veteran,” continued to top South Korea’s weekend box office. Its victory, however, was a hollow one as Korea’s overall box office slumped to its lowest level this year. Nationwide, Korea’s roughly 2,500 cinemas together earned just $4.39 million between Friday and Sunday. In several previous […]

New Zealand-based sales company Black Mandala has picked up all international rights to “Lake Jesup: Bonecrusher’s Revenge,” a now-completed creature feature set in the most-alligator-infested lake in the U.S. In 2003, Lake Jesup became the setting for real-life horror story when a huge alligator, known as Bonecrusher, escaped captivity at an animal theme park Gator […]

The Busan International Film Festival’s industry sidebar, the Asian Contents & Film Market, wrapped on Tuesday night and showed how the local indie film industry has survived despite the economic slowdown and a theatrical business that still hasn’t fully recovered from the pandemic. The expanded, four-day market brought together 2,644 participants from 1,031 companies across […]

GrX Studio has set its sights on an international expansion that matches its leading position within Taiwan’s film and TV production industry. At a fast-paced event on Monday held on the margins of the Busan International Film Festival, the company detailed plans to invest some $45 million over five years into 15 Mandarin-language series and […]

After three days of one-on-one meetings within the Asian Project Market, winners were announced at a ceremony in Busan, South Korea, on Tuesday evening. The project market is held as part of the Asian Contents & Film Market, which is closely aligned with the Busan International Film Festival. Some 30 film projects were pitched by […]

Box office in China over the country’s crucial National Day holiday season fell by 23% according to Maoyan, a leading movie ticketing platform. Gross nationwide revenues ran at approximately RMB300 million ($42.5 million) per day from Tuesday last week to Monday, adding up to RMB2.10 billion ($297 million), Maoyan Research Institute said. Some 52 million […]

Serving a rising demand for Indonesian horror, U.S.-Thai film sales company EST N8 has picked up rights to “Perewangan,” a feature that launches in its home market theaters later this month. In “Perewangan,” characters Maya and Wulan face supernatural terror as their once-thriving family business crumbles, leading them to confront a horrifying figure behind their […]