‘Top Gun Maverick’ Fires Off $9.7 Million Second Weekend Ahead of ‘Decision to Leave’ at Korean Box Office

BT And Warner Bros Discovery UK Sports Joint Venture Approved

Herbert L. Kloiber’s Night Train Media has acquired scripted distributor Eccho Rights from Korean giant CJ ENM, with Eccho Co-Founder Nicola Söderlund retiring.

Seoul Vibe. Netflix Golden, a social media channel of the streaming platform dedicated to celebrating the pan-Asian diaspora, took to Twitter to announce Seoul Vibe will begin streaming on August 26.The announcement also arrived alongside the first visual for the new movie: a poster depicting two race cars forming the number “88” through skid marks, setting the stage for the film’s setting in 1988. “Drive back to 1988,” reads the poster.Seoul Vibe: coming Aug.

Japanese Breakfast has joined forces with SE SO NEON singer Hwang So-yoon – AKA So!YoON! – for a Korean language version of the former’s 2021 single ‘Be Sweet’.The track comes from last year’s critically acclaimed third Japanese Breakfast album ‘Jubilee’, with Michelle Zauner performing the single on Ellen and her Saturday Night Live debut. ‘Be Sweet’ also featured on The Sims 4 and inspired a Goose Island beer.“We thought it would be fun to put out a special Korean version of ‘Be Sweet’ preceding our upcoming performance in Seoul,” Zauner explained, referencing their forthcoming August 6 show at the Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival.“I’m very grateful Yaeji helped me with the translation over a year ago.

Jennie, main rapper in K-pop group Blackpink, will be seen in the Weeknd’s (aka Abel Tesfaye) upcoming HBO drama series The Idol, alongside lead Lily-Rose Depp.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefJennie, part of the K-Pop girl group Blackpink will appear in the upcoming HBO TV series “The Idol.” She joins a cast that is headed by The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp.Co-created by The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye), Sam Levinson (“Euphoria”) and Reza Fahim, “The Idol” is set against the backdrop of the music industry. The plot follows a self-help guru and cult leader who develops a complicated relationship with an up-and-coming pop idol.Jennie, expected to be credited under her full name Jennie Kim, appeared briefly in a recently released trailer for the show. The show’s release date has not been announced.HBO subsequently confirmed Jennie’s participation via Twitter.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefTerapin Studios, a U.S.-Korean media investor backed by NPX Capital, has paid $160 million to acquire Toomics Global, one of South Korea’s fastest rising platforms for webtoons.Webtoons, vertically-scrolling comic strips designed to be viewed on smartphones, emerged in South Korea about 15 years ago and have become a major cultural phenomenon across Japan, Korea and much of Southeast Asia.Webtoons have also been the form of IP underlying many Korean film and TV hits, including Netflix’s “All of Us Are Dead” and “Itaewon Class,” Disney+’s “Moving” and “Dr Brain” for Apple TV+.Netflix is also on course to produce a series, “Black Knight,” based on Toomics’ original webtoon IP “Delivery Knight.” The sci-fi miniseries, starring A-list actor Kim Woo Bin (“Alienoid”), is expected to premiere this year. The Terapin-Toomics deal follows a February 2022 acquisition that saw Terapin buy Copin Communications, a Korean webtoon producer.The two deals together are expected to give Terapin the capacity to take its stable of cartoon creators further into international markets and the ability to negotiate deals for its IP in multiple related or ancillary markets, from animated film and TV, to books, games, merchandize and NFTs.“A [third party] Korean production company is working with Netflix on ‘Black Knight’,” Samuel Hwang, founder and CEO of NPX Capital, told Variety.

Ahead of its much-anticipated Q2 Earnings reveal, Netflix debuted its Top 10 ranking for the week of July 11 to 17, with “Stranger Things 4” leading the pack. “Resident Evil” — based on the popular horror video game of the same name — snagged the No. 2 spot upon its premiere July 14.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe Asian Contents and Film Market, the industry component of the Busan International Film Festival, is to launch an in-person story market at this year’s event.The ACFM has for ten years operated what it called an Entertainment Intellectual Property Market. But where the E-IP Market has been a one-way pitching event, the new Busan Story Market is conceived as something functionally closer to a conventional rights market, with buyers and sellers meeting at sales booths, but trading books, webtoons, web novels, games, and stories.The Busan Story Market is an outgrowth of the E-IP event and will operate in addition to the continuing pitching sessions.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefKorean streaming platforms Tving and Seezn have announced plans to merge. The consolidation move is seen as a means to counter the dominance of Netflix, which is by far the largest subscription video player in the country.The move was unveiled in two regulatory filings by KT Studio Genie, the media unit of telecoms operator KT Studio Genie, owner of Seezn, and by CJ ENM, the 57% majority owner of TVing.The merger is intended to “strengthen the over-the-top (OTT) platform competitiveness within the domestic media and contents industry, and accelerate the growth of K-contents,” KT Studio Genie said.Tving CEO Yang Ji-eul said the enlarged entity aims to become the world’s No.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief“Top Gun Maverick” reclaimed the lead at the South Korea box office as “Thor: Love and Thunder” slowed rapidly and Korean cinemas endured a weekend that slowed the recent recovery trend.“Top Gun Maverick” earned $5.77 million between Friday and Sunday, in its fourth week of release in Korea, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). That was a drop of only 11% from its previous weekend.In contrast, “Thor Love and Thunder” registered a 66% weekend-on-weekend tumble, falling from $9.88 million previously to $3.34 million.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorOppa!This Friday, July 15, marks the 10th anniversary of Psy’s “Gangnam Style” music video release — and the Korean artist’s combo of stylish quirkiness, trademark dance moves, synth hooks and satirical edge made it the first viral video to top 1 billion views on YouTube.Less than six months after its release, “Gangnam Style” on Dec. 21, 2012, became the first honoree in YouTube’s Billion Views Club.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefMixing “Jason Bourne” and “Mission: Impossible” adrenalin rushes with Korean cool, Netflix is teasing high octane footage of “Carter,” its first Korean original movie of the second half of the year.The action plays out two months into a deadly pandemic originating from the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas. The outbreak has already devastated the U.S. and North Korea.

MOMOLAND singer Daisy has alleged that she was “fired” from the girl group.The former K-pop idol had recently hosted a live broadcast on TikTok, during which she had reportedly expressed her frustration regarding the public misconception that she had left the girl group of her own will. “Guys, for the love of God. I did not leave, I was fired,” she claimed.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief“Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area” has become Netflix’s latest Korean-made international hit. The Korean remake of “La Casa de Papel” (aka “Money Heist”) is in first place on the streaming giant’s Global Non-English top ten chart over the last week.The series premiered on Friday (June 24), meaning that it only had three days to claim its spot in chart that covers the period June 20-26.

Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area has topped Netflix’s Global Top 10 list of most-watched non-English shows for the week.According to data from the streaming platform, Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area was the most-viewed non-English show for the week of June 20 to 26, logging 33.7million hours viewed.That figure also places the brand-new K-drama series as the third most-watched show on the streaming platform overall, only bested by the fourth season of Stranger Things (76.9million hours viewed) and the newly released third season of The Umbrella Academy.Elsewhere on this week’s rankings of the most-watched Netflix shows, K-drama Our Blues ranked eighth on the non-English list with 9.2million hours viewed. It is the series’ ninth week on the list since its premiere in April.Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area is a South Korean remake of the Spanish series of the same name, and premiered on Netflix on June 24.

Stranger Things Season 4 Vol. 1 closed the 28-day window Netflix uses to measure premiere viewership for its TV series and movies with 930.3 million hours viewed. That is the most for any English-language Netflix series ever and the second largest audience overall behind the streamer’s Korean smash Squid Game, which clocked in 1.6 billion hours viewed over that period.

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures is set to remake critically acclaimed South Korean crime thriller The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil with original star Don Lee (aka Ma Dong-seok) reprising his lead role as a gang boss looking for redemption in the studio’s U.S. version.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief“Top Gun Maverick” flew to the top of the box office charts in South Korea over the weekend, with a supersonic $9.6 million opening loop. It replaced “The Witch: Part 2 The Other One,” which had been top dog for only a week.Tom Cruise, a regular visitor to Korea, jetted into Seoul with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and co-stars Miles Teller, Glen Powell and Greg Tarzan Davis to goose the movie’s takeoff in the country. Cruise professed himself grateful for the fan’s warm reception and talked up the importance of in-person visits to the cinema.Sub-distributed in Korea by Lotte Entertainment, the film opened on Wednesday and played on more than 1,900 screens.