Filmart: CJ ENM Predicts Sci-Fi Series Pitting School Kids Against Alien Monsters Will Be “Biggest Show of 2023”

Filmart: CJ ENM Predicts Sci-Fi Series Pitting School Kids Against Alien Monsters Will Be “Biggest Show of 2023”,South Korean entertainment giant predicts 'Duty After School' will be the ‘biggest show of 2023.

Filmart: CJ ENM Predicts Sci-Fi Series Pitting School Kids Against Alien Monsters Will Be “Biggest Show of 2023”

Filmart 2019, the last in-person Filmart before COVIDCourtesy of HKTDC

Hong Kong Filmart opened its 2023 edition Monday, looking to unearth the next big thing in Asian content, and South Korean entertainment giant CJ ENM believes it is on the money with Duty After School, a new series that pits high school students against invading monsters from outer space.

“This is the biggest show of 2023,” predicted Sebastian Kim, director of content sales and acquisitions and South Korean entertainment powerhouse CJ ENM.

A clip from Duty After School was the highlight of a CJ showreel Kim brought with him to Hong Kong. It revealed a schoolyard sci-fi show that looks to come cleverly crafted for a YA audience with big-screen production standards. Kim said it, and other CJ productions, were now benefitting directly from recent Korean content success stories.

“Parasite and Squid Game were produced for the domestic market but they got support from global OTT platforms and a gradual exposure to a global market,” he said. “Extra funding was coming in from global viewers that gives us a bigger budget. We want to make sure that our company brings the best value to content creators and the platforms at the same time and we want to make the scale bigger, so we can produce shows that we’ve not been able to do before.”

It’s been three years since there have been boots on the ground at Filmart and so those who have traveled came to Monday’s opening day hoping to once again tap into the mood of the region and the trends in content across Asia. Kim duly delivered in a three-man opening session that was framed to focus on “The Asian Wave in 2023 and Beyond.”

Korean content continues to pave the way forward for the region, and Kim was joined on stage at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre by representatives from two companies — and two nations — that hope to follow suit.

Sanmesh Thakur is the executive vp and territorial head for APAC at India’s Zee Entertainment Enterprises and he said his company would be hedging its global ambitions on drama, because “we all cry about the same things.” What could be the clincher when it comes to either success or failure to find an audience today was more how the story was told than what, exactly, the story was. He suggested “unconventional” was the way forward.

“The people today who are consuming this content, mostly millennials, they want something which is fast,” he said. “This is purely a social media generation, and that’s why they’re looking for it. So as long as the creators keep giving that same kind of content to its consumers, I think that will keep working. There are only a finite number of stories So it’s just the way of telling that story which could be different.”

Ziraviss Vindhanapisuth, vp international business at Thailand’s BEC World Public Company, said his company had found success across markets with rom-coms drama and traditional Thai horror. The surprise, he said, had been the global success of a series of BL dramas that at first had proved popular in markets such as Japan and Taiwan and South Korea but increasingly had audiences in the U.S. The initial target of these series was the domestic and Southeast Asian markets but that was changing, he said.

“We thought this was a niche audience but it is now a wide audience,” said Vindhanapisuth.