South Korean sellers have shared mixed messages from this year’s Cannes Marché with some not striking a single deal with European buyers while others have diversified their slates to adapt to market challenges.
The absence of any Korean feature in official selection for the first time in 12 years has dealt a blow to sellers who could usually rely on striking deals around the world with a coveted Cannes title. But the issues run deeper and the challenges faced by the film industry in Korea are now being reflected at markets. Major firms such as CJ ENM are absent this year.
“We’re meeting a lot of European and North American buyers but there have been no offers at all, and it’s been like that for nearly a year now,” said one Korean seller. “During Covid, demand for Korean content outside Asia rose a lot and so did our prices. But buyers know the market and just aren’t going to pay whatever we ask. There needs to be a rethink.”
It is a reversal of fortune from 2019, when Parasite won the Palme d’Or. “Back then, the global interest in Korean content was building and erupted in 2019,” the seller recalled. “We don’t see that now and we see fewer participants at the market and less buyers approaching us. We used to take more than 12 meetings every day at the market for close to a week. That has now halved. Our regulars are no longer regulars.”
The sales executive confessed there was not a single French buyer who had requested a meeting and Germany also lacked interest.
However, Korean sellers have seen this coming and have been diversifying in recent years to meet the headwinds. Barunson E&A, the studio behind Parasite, has been expanding its lineup of titles from Indonesia and signed a partnership with Indonesian studio Imajinari earlier this month. Seoul-based Finecut showcased a feature at the market titled Journey There, starring US actor Justin H. Min of Netflix series Beef and The Umbrella Academy.
Showbox, which took the market location usually occupied by CJ ENM in Cannes, boarded sales on its first title directed solely by an Indonesian filmmaker, Sleep No More by Locarno award-winning director Edwin. On the local front, it also has upcoming action thriller Colony from Yeon Sang-ho, the acclaimed director of past Cannes selections Train To Busan and Peninsula.
Plus M Entertainment arrived with a raft of international collaborations including upcoming action thriller Pig Village, billed as the biggest English-language feature ever made through the Korean studio system; South Korea-Canada co-pro House With A Garden, also English-language; and a remake of indie Belgian horror #No_Filter. It has also partnered with Japan’s KDDI Corporation to collaborate on theatrical releases and jointly develop remakes.
“It’s true that the market is facing challenges, not just in Korea but internationally,” said Plus M head of content Eugene Kim. “We believe that developing strong stories that can travel beyond Korea and using them to actively find international collaborations without assuming different territories and markets have certain limits, is the way out of this slump.”
Another seller said it was more focussed on business within Asia. “We’re relying strongly on Asia, which is the only constant buyer for us now,” they said. “Southeast Asia is on the rise and both Vietnam and Indonesia are big markets now, where there is more co-production investment.”
There are also hopes that China’s long-standing restrictions on K-content are set to ease and business with the global superpower can resume.
“A newly updated frontier is China,” said the sales executive. “We are seeing a gap beginning to open there and hearing rumours that we should be prepared. We have some upcoming election results that could influence this but, either way, we are being told, ‘Get ready’.”
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