Singapore & South Korea Disney News Tracker

[Haymarket]

Just snapshots of their respective Disney websites, disney.sg and disney.kr, to track any changes.

 

[Haymarket]

November 16, 2023

The Hollywood Reporter

Disney’s “Turbocharging” of Theme Park Business Gathers Pace With ‘Frozen Land’ Launch in Hong Kong

The first and largest Disney attraction dedicated to the blockbuster 'Frozen' franchise comes amid the company's plans to spend a whopping $60 billion over the next decade to expand its parks and cruises.

A full decade after the Walt Disney Co.’s musical animation Frozen became a worldwide box-office phenomenon — and the enduring soundtrack to the lives of parents with little kids everywhere — the very first theme park attraction dedicated to the film is set to open its doors Monday at the Hong Kong Disneyland Resort.

The belated leveraging of the internationally beloved IP is expected to drive further gains for Disney’s lucrative, newly renamed Experiences group, including its theme parks, cruise lines and consumer products businesses, which reported a 31 percent surge in operating income last quarter.

The launch also underscores the role the Asia-Pacific region will play in Disney’s recently unveiled plans of “turbocharging growth in our parks and experiences business,” as CEO Bob Iger put it on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this month. In September, Disney said it will spend $60 billion over the next 10 years to expand its parks and cruise lines — nearly double its investment in the sector during the last decade.

Among Disney’s portfolio of six theme park resorts around the world, Hong Kong Disneyland is the location perhaps most in need of a boost. The park, which is jointly owned by Disney and the Hong Kong government (with the government holding a slight majority), has reported a loss for the past eight financial years and made profits only in three years since its opening in 2005. The park faced several significant headwinds over the past few years, including a steep decline in civic activity and mainland Chinese tourism during Hong Kong’s 2019-2020 pro-democracy protests, followed by the city’s lengthy border control policies throughout the pandemic.

“[World of Frozen] is going to entirely change the footprint of this theme park, bringing completely new fans and families into the franchise,” Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Experiences, said in an interview Thursday with The Hollywood Reporter.

The executive added that he had toured the new Frozen attraction earlier in the day with filmmaker Jennifer Lee, co-creator and co-director of the Frozen films. “To see her walk into this space and be completely immersed and overwhelmed, quite frankly, by what she saw — this is a big deal,” he said.

D’Amaro said Disney settled on Hong Kong as the first global location for a Frozen land because it “knew that the guests in Asia and in Hong Kong were asking for this” and “we just saw a huge opportunity to do it right here.”

Hong Kong’s World of Frozen brings a number of iconic scenes from the movies to life, such as North Mountain, Elsa’s Ice Palace, Arendelle Castle, Friendship Fountain and the Clock Tower where Anna dances with Prince Hans. The area also features three flagship attractions: Frozen Ever After, a family-friendly boat ride that immerses guests in the music and world of the films; Wandering Oaken’s Sliding Sleighs, a high-speed rollercoaster through the landscapes of Arendelle; and Playhouse in the Woods, a high-tech interactive show featuring Anna, Elsa and Olaf.

Business at Hong Kong Disneyland has already begun improving ahead of the new attraction’s upcoming opening next week. In its quarterly earnings report on Nov. 8, the company said the international branch of its Experiences division saw income rise more than 100 percent to $441 million, with higher attendance and higher ticket prices at its Shanghai and Hong Kong parks offsetting weaker results at its domestic parks in California and Florida.

“As borders have opened up, flights continue to come in and visas get easier to get your hands on, we’ve seen really nice growth here,” D’Amaro said from Hong Kong. “With the addition of this new land, it’s going to open people’s eyes wide in terms of this being a place for them to come now. So we have high expectations here.”

Disney already had announced several significant expansions of its parks and cruise lines overseas before revealing the $60 billion spending plan for the coming decade. The World of Frozen opening in Hong Kong is to be followed by the long-planned launch of a Zootopia-themed area at the Shanghai Disney Resort in December, a Frozen Kingdom attraction at the Tokyo Disney Resort in spring 2024 and a another Frozen-themed Kingdom of Arendelle area at Disneyland Paris in 2024/2025. Disney launched cruise lines in Australia and New Zealand for the first time in October, and thanks to the popularity of the first sailings, the company recently unveiled expanded voyages to the two countries for 2024 and 2025. A Disney Cruise Lines seaport is also planned for Singapore in 2025 — a first in Southeast Asia. In the most recent full fiscal year, Disney invested $5 billion in its parks, resorts and cruises.

D’Amaro declined to say what share of the upcoming $60 billion spend has been earmarked for domestic versus more international projects in Asia.

“All of the sites today are performing exceptionally well,” he said, referring to Disney’s parks in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo. “We will continue to invest there, and I think this can be augmented with other experiences outside of these three theme parks.”

Disney has revealed massive domestic expansion goals as well, but those ambitions may ultimately depend on forces beyond its control. The company wants to redevelop land next to the original Disneyland in California, but doing so will require the City of Anaheim to change a policy that restricts where such attractions can be built. The city is scheduled to vote on Disney’s proposed changes to the rules in late 2024. Disney also previously said it would spend $17 billion to expand Florida’s Walt Disney World over the next decade, but those targets are in limbo amid the company’s high-profile legal dispute with the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis.

 

[Haymarket]

November 21, 2023

People

BTS to Release Intimate, Behind-the-Scenes Docuseries 'BTS Monuments: Beyond the Star' on Disney+

The K-pop band's new eight-episode docuseries will premiere on streaming on Dec. 20

BTS may be on hiatus right now, but they’re keeping the ARMY well-fed.

The K-pop superstars announced on Monday that they’re set to release a special docuseries on Disney+ titled BTS Monuments: Beyond the Star, and it’s coming very soon.

The eight-part series will premiere on streaming on Dec. 20, with two episodes rolling out every Wednesday.

BTS Monuments: Beyond the Star comes as the “Butter” group celebrates 10 years together as a band. According to a press release, the project features all-new interviews with j-hope, SUGA, V, Jimin, Jin, Jungkook and RM and dives into their ascension towards being an international sensation over the past decade, while exploring the challenges they’ve faced along the way.

The hitmakers shared the news of the project by releasing a brief teaser that features all seven members. Although the clip comes in at just 16 seconds, each singer/dancer chimes in about how overcome with emotion they’ve been at times throughout their whirlwind career.

“I felt each and every emotion,” J-Hope, 29, says in the clip, while V, 27, admits to a time he couldn’t stop laughing and Jimin, 28, refers to a moment he started crying. “We did it,” RM, 29, says as the sweet teaser concludes.

In the caption for the teaser, the official synopsis reads: “BTS marks its 10th anniversary as a 21st-century pop icons. Join their journey to the top and beyond.”

The Grammy-nominated group also shared the poster for the project featuring a glowing, white light peeking through their logo to allude to the “raising anticipation around the newly unfolding story of the band,” as described in a press release.

The K-pop idols first launched their career in 2013 with their debut album 2 Cool 4 Skool, and since then they’ve dropped nine studio albums, had six No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, launched their own successful solo careers and ultimately helped to lead the wave of K-pop becoming a global phenomenon.

BTS Monuments: Beyond the Star also hits streaming as the “Dynamite” band is on pause while several members complete their mandatory military service in South Korea. Jin, 30, enlisted in late 2022, followed by J-Hope in April of this year and Suga, 30, in September, making their eventual reunion scheduled for 2025.

The Disney+ documentary isn’t the only project members of their devoted ARMY fanbase are able to tune into in the meantime.

On Nov. 19, the seven-piece group released the concert film BTS: Yet to Come on Amazon Prime Video. The film captures the stars performing 19 of their biggest hits, including songs like “RUN,” “Mic Drop” and “Yet to Come (The Most Beautiful Moment),” before an audience of 50,000 at their October 2022 show at Asiad Main Stadium in Busan, South Korea.

Within the past year, Jimin, SUGA, Jungkook, 26, and V have also delighted fans by continuing to release new music, with each releasing their debut solo efforts.

 

[Haymarket]

November 24, 2023

Time

How Netflix Is Extending Its Tentacles Across Asia in Search of the Next Squid Game

There’s no shortage of metrics to gauge the runaway success of Squid Game. The dystopian South Korean death-or-glory drama is Netflix’s most-watched series of all time, clocking 1.65 billion viewing hours in its first month (equivalent to 190,000 years). It received 14 Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning six. Squid Game star O Yeong-su was the first Korean-born actor to win a Golden Globe. It has even spawned a spin-off reality game show, Squid Game: The Challenge, that debuted this week.

But for Netflix’s APAC vice-president Minyoung Kim, who first greenlighted the script in 2019 in her former role running the firm’s Korean content, the most staggering impact she saw was on shoes. Specifically, the fact that sales of the white Vans slip-ons worn by Squid Game characters soared 7,800% after its release. “It wasn’t product placement; it was just a very basic sneaker!” Kim tells TIME with a laugh. “We really didn’t expect people to react to something like that.”

It wasn’t just viewers that reacted to Squid Game, of course. Transforming a $21.4 million production budget into a $900 million phenomenon turned eyes across the entertainment industry. Squid Game was the ultimate justification for Netflix’s then-nascent international expansion and prompted a doubling-down of the strategy. Today, 60% of Netflix’s global audience has watched Korean content, while 70% of its viewers are outside the U.S.

“The ambition was to break the language barrier and really connect the global audience together,” says Kim. “Squid Game just really proved that.”

Other streaming services followed suit with Disney and Amazon in particular unveiling a growing slate of Korean content. Determined to stay ahead of the game, Netflix announced in April it was investing an eye-popping $2.5 billion in Korean content over the next four years. “I always say to Ted [Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO], ‘You’ve announced it now, no backsies!’” jokes Kim.

It’s a sum that puts “very exciting pressure” on Kim, she says, while underscoring how Korean content will remain a major plinth of Netflix’s future business strategy. Already, Korean shows like revenge-saga The Glory and feel-good lawyer drama Extraordinary Attorney Woo have proven that Squid Game was no flash in the pan.

But Kim says she is more excited about bringing great shows from elsewhere across Asia to a wider audience. Already, Netflix has seen renewed interest in its pre-existing Japanese sci-fi thriller Alice in Borderland, which developed a large following among Americans inspired by Squid Game to broaden their viewing horizons.

Now Netflix is also investing in films in markets like Thailand, Indonesia, and Taiwan in the firm belief that the next Squid Game could come from anywhere. Japan, for one, “is just a paradise of imagination,” says Kim. “There’s so many great manga [intellectual properties] out there.”

It’s a strategy that is already bearing fruit. In April, Thai film Hunger rose to the top of Netflix’s global viewing charts. Meanwhile, the widely acclaimed Indonesian love story Cigarette Girl ranks among Netflix’s top non-English language content.

Other productions’ impacts have been more profound; Wave Makers, which follows staffers during a sexually-charged presidential election campaign in Taiwan, sparked a societal #MeToo reckoning that ensnared several top lawmakers. (The show’s fictional presidential candidate, actress Tammy Lai, became the real-life running mate of Apple supplier Foxconn CEO Terry Gou until he withdrew from January’s election on Friday.) “For us, it was an office drama about growth and romance,” says Kim. “But sometimes things happen you don’t expect, because the audience is seeing something that they resonate with.”

But beyond simply discovering great content, Kim’s pitch is that Netflix’s investment across the region can catalyze a resurgent pan-Asian film ecosystem. If taken alone, each nation’s film industry will struggle to produce content of sufficient quality to captivate an international audience. However, by utilizing specific areas of expertise across the region—Thailand’s skill at post-production, South Korea’s mastery of special effects, Singapore for animation—there’s real potential to pool resources to boost overall quality and appeal.

“In Asia, a lot of creators are motivated to always try new things and push boundaries but are sometimes stuck because of the limitations in their own country,” says Kim. “Netflix is very well positioned to connect the region together.”

It’s not that far-fetched. After all, J. K. Rowling’s insistence that the Harry Potter movies were shot in the U.K. was single-handedly credited for rejuvenating a moribund British film industry, which attracted $7.3 billion in foreign investment last year alone.

Already, the boom of streaming services has prompted standards to rise across Asia’s film industry. “People have had to uplift their skills,” says Kamonthip Tachasakulmas, director of Bangkok-based One Cool Production, whose client roster today is half international and did post-production work on Hunger as well as several other Netflix projects. “For international platforms, your job goes worldwide so you need to keep quality control.”

Still, Kim’s vision may appear slightly utopian when set against the May to November Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes—now-settled industrial action chiefly spurred by dissatisfaction with remuneration under Netflix’s streaming model. Netflix insists that its priority is ensuring adequate compensation for content producers at the outset of a project, so they get paid fairly even if it flops.

Yet the fact that Netflix last month upped its free cash flow projection for the whole year to $6.5 billion didn’t exactly assuage the aggrieved feelings of content producers. Even Squid Game director Hwang Dong-hyuk didn’t receive royalties on top of his original contract flat fee. For some, his macabre allegory of capitalism exploiting the desperate many for the pleasure of a wealthy elite struck a little too close to home.

An additional irony, of course, was that it was Netflix’s overseas production footprint that enabled it to lean into foreign content and mitigate the deleterious effects of the Hollywood strike. That the vast bulk of Squid Game profits went to Netflix became a political issue in South Korea, which announced plans in June to provide 500 billion won ($390 million) to help local streaming platforms compete with global rivals. Since 2018, 17 E.U. countries have imposed levies on streaming services to be funneled into national funds for local films, dramas, and documentaries.

“There are certain regions of the world where companies got together to say, ‘all right, we need to circumvent Netflix here as they have too much power,’” says streaming industry analyst Dan Rayburn. Kim says that there’s an ongoing conversation to be had about changes that “organically make the industry much healthier … to enable more sustenance, sustainability, and more success for Korean storytellers.”

It’s quite likely that a Squid Game-scale hit would spark similar conversations anywhere. For now, though, the investment of streaming services like Netflix is seen as hugely positive for a Southeast Asian film industry still reeling from depressed cinema attendances owing to the pandemic. “There are some issues, but the larger picture is that streaming is really good for filmmaking in the region,” says Adam Knee, dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Media & Creative Industries at Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore. “It increases the possibility for Southeast Asian products that have wide success with wide viewership.”

As for issues, Knee raises the possibility for commercially-backed ventures with eyes firmly on profits to shy away from the region’s more locally controversial topics—whether the monarchy in Thailand, political repression in Vietnam, or drugs in Singapore. Already, Netflix has proven willing to kowtow to censorship demands in many countries. “The question is whether we have the same vibrant, artistic expression in the cinema sector when it’s being run by this corporate entity,” says Knee.

But a more insidious danger, he says, is when the chimera of gaining global renown prompts filmmakers to pander to international audiences at the expense of domestic viewers. It’s a risk that’s only too apparent to Kim, for whom confused, watered-down content is anathema.

“Local authenticity is really important,” she says. “If a show really works in that country but does not travel outside, that’s still great for us. What we don’t want is a show that does not work in that country but works outside.”

Of course, until Kim finds the next Squid Game, we’ve still got season 2 to look forward to, filming for which is already underway. Kim knows that, stripped of the first season’s novelty factor, the new story, social commentary, and characters must all deliver—not that she’s worried.

“It’s going to be much bigger, it’s got new games, and a different angle of how human beings interact,” she says. “I have no doubt that people will really enjoy it.” Just as long as those on screen really, really don’t.

 

[Haymarket]

November 28, 2023

Time Out: Singapore

Life-size Pop Mart Disney-themed installations will be scattered across 16 CapitaLand malls this Christmas

With a wide selection of merchandise, collectibles and art toys at selected malls, as well as a multi-sensory train ride

From now till December 31, spot life-size Disney-themed toy installations inspired by Chinese toy maker brand Pop Mart scattered across 16 CapitaLand malls. This activation marks Asia’s largest Pop Mart event.

The whimsical 3D displays take after three versions of the Pop Mart Disney blind box series – Disney Classic Fairy Tales Series, Disney 10th Anniversary Mickey Ever-Curious Adventure Series, and Disney Princess Fairy Tales Friendship Series.

Mickey Mouse fans, check out different renditions of the popular Disney character across Singapore such as the futuristic robot Mickey at Aperia Mall, Prince Mickey at Bedok Mall, Woodcut Mickey at Tampines Mall, Popcorn Mickey at Sengkang Grand Mall, Balloon Mickey at SingPost Centre and Muppet Mickey at Junction 8.In addition, watch your favourite Disney characters come to life at meet-and-greet sessions. Tinker Bell will make an appearance at Bugis Junction, while Bambi and Dumbo will be present at Bugis+ and Plaza Singapura respectively. Other characters include Stitch and Pinocchio at Funan, Donald Duck at CQ @ Clarke Quay, and Mickey Mouse at Raffles City Singapore. Disney princesses aren’t left out either – meet brave warriors Mulan and Jasmine at IMM, Cinderella at Lot One, Snow White at Bukit Panjang, and Belle at Westgate. Don’t forget to snap a pose with your favourite installation and upload it on Instagram with the tag @CapitaLandMallsSG to stand a chance to win a $50 CapitaVoucher.

For those who want to bring home memorabilia, you’ll be happy to know that the Pop Mart stores at Bugis Junction, Funan, Lot One, Plaza Singapura and Westgate will have a wide selection of merchandise, collectibles, and art toys. There will also be a special festive Pop-Up store at Tampines Mall from November 22 to February 13, 2024.

Lastly, a special treat awaits shoppers at Raffles City and Plaza Singapura – hop on the Enchanted Express train set against a projection-mapping backdrop for a unique rail experience and a mesmerising 360-degree multi-sensory animation. The train will make its rounds at Raffles City from November 15 to 26 and will move on to Plaza Singapura from December 1 to 17. The first 10,000 passengers on the Enchanted Express stand a chance to receive a Golden Ticket that entails special prizes.

The participating malls are Aperia Mall, Bedok Mall, Bugis+, Bugis Junction, Bugis Street, Bukit Panjang Plaza, CQ @ Clarke Quay, Funan, IMM, Jewel Changi Airport, Junction 8, Lot One, Plaza Singapura, Raffles City Singapore, Sengkang Grand Mall, SingPost Centre, Tampines Mall and Westgate.

 

[Haymarket]

November 19, 2023

The New Paper (The Straits Times)

Immersive Disney Animation makes its Southeast Asian debut in Singapore

A worthwhile activity to consider during the school holidays.

Think animation and Disney is one of the first names that come to mind.

Many of us grew up on Disney and may have seen favourites like Lion King and Frozen several times (whether you'd like to admit it or not). Fans will be delighted that the Immersive Disney Animation experience has finally reached our shores.

Presented by Base Entertainment Asia in partnership with Walt Disney Animation Studios, Immersive Disney Animation makes its Southeast Asian debut at the Sands Theatre at Marina Bay Sands on Nov 18.

Fun fact: Nov 18 is also Mickey Mouse's birthday.

It is a chance to see some of Disney's best-loved movie moments like never before as you are taken through a journey of animated filmmaking from paper to screen.

When you enter the Sands Theatre's foyer, you will see a humongous inflatable Mickey Mouse and life-sized models of Elsa and Anna from the popular movie Frozen.

Those who enjoy peeking behind the curtain will enjoy perusing physical 3D sculptures animators use as part of their design process.

After that, you enter the theatre and head down an illuminated tunnel featuring Sorcerer Mickey at the end, pointing you onwards to the pre-exhibit area.

This area offers insight into the art of animation and how an animator's mind works.

It may be a bit dry for the younger ones but there are tables set up with paper and pencils and step-by-step instructions on how to sketch some of Disney's most popular characters. Both adults and children were seen enthusiastically participating in this activity.

However, the main event is when you are ushered into the main show space to experience the true magic of the Immersive Disney Animation.

If you have visited Sands Theatre before, you will be struck by how different it looks. It was deconstructed and rebuilt into a 360-degree space filled with wall-to-wall projections.

The theatre's seats are gone and intentionally so. Apart from a few benches, the area is open and meant to be explored by visitors.

If you have children, this is a great opportunity for them to expel some of that boundless energy.

However, towards the end of the show, many visitors ended up sitting on the floor. They looked pretty comfortable enjoying the show too.

You may wonder how different the Immersive Disney Animation is compared to watching your favourite movies at home or the cinema. It is as immersive as it promises to be. You can be in any area of the space and still have an amazing view and experience.

You will be treated to Disney's greatest hits as over 40 of their animated films are represented in the montages and sequences.

Look out for scenes and songs from Frozen, The Little Mermaid, Moana, Encanto and the iconic opening Circle of Life scene from Lion King.

The interactive floor comes to life as you move about, illuminating your every move and constantly changing to match the wall projections.

Even though the clips are not feature-length, they will still provoke emotions and nostalgia.

Shimmering bubbles add a little bit more magic to the immersive environment.

The experience is 90 minutes and the main show lasts for about an hour which is adequate considering it is catered to fans of all ages.

Ultimately, it's a worthwhile activity to consider during the school holidays.

IMMERSIVE DISNEY ANIMATION
Where: Sands Theatre, Marina Bay Sands, 10 Bayfront Avenue

When: From Nov 18. Open Mondays to Sundays, time-slots from 10am to 10pm.

Admission: $33 to $78 from Marina Bay Sands and Sistic and Trip.com.

 

[Haymarket]

November 16, 2023

Confirm Good

Snap IG-worthy pics with life-sized POP MART Disney characters, take an immersive 360-degree “train ride” and snag free POP MART blind boxes at malls across Singapore

POP MART has been busy feeding us fans this 2023 with the release of Jujutsu Kaisen figures, Singapore’s first POP TOY SHOW and the opening of their theme park POP LAND in Beijing, China. And now, POP MART is bringing gigantic 3D installations of Disney characters to malls islandwide, with a free unboxing bash, an immersive 360-degree multi sensory “train ride” and more!

You’ll be spending a magical Christmas with POP MART Disney characters from three of their blind box series — Disney Classic Fairy Tales, Disney 100th Anniversary Mickey Ever-Curious Adventure and Disney Princess Fairy Tales Friendship.

Head down to the 16 CapitaLand malls for a photo with your favourite Disney characters. Each mall will feature a different character:

• Aperia Mall: Robot Mickey
• Bedok Mall: Prince Mickey
• Bugis Junction: Tinker Bell
• Bugis+: Bambi
• Bukit Panjang Plaza: Snow White
• CQ@Clarke Quay: Donald Duck
• Funan: Stitch and Pinocchio
• IMM: Mulan and Jasmine
• Junction 8: Muppet Mickey
• Lot One Shoppers’ Mall: Cinderella
• Plaza Singapura and The Atrium @ Orchard: Dumbo
• Raffles City: Mickey Mouse
• SingPost Centre: Balloon Mickey
• Sengkang Grand Mall: Popcorn Mickey
• Tampines Mall: Woodcut Mickey
• Westgate: Belle and Beast

Tampines Mall will also be hosting a special festive POP MART pop-up store on Level 1 from 22 November 2023 to 13 February 2024. Just so you know, there’ll be new Disney characters joining your POP MART collection soon!

You can find Princess Ariel, Stitch, and more exclusively at Tampines Mall’s pop-up store, Bugis Junction, Funan, Lot One, Plaza Singapura and Westgate.

That’s not all — you can snag a free POP MART blind box at the largest CapitaLand x POP MART unboxing bash ever! If you’re lucky, you might even unbox the newly launched festive series or fan favourites like Molly, Dimoo and more. It is free to sign up as well, but it’s on a first come first served basis, so sign up here now before all the slots are taken.

Don’t forget to hop on the Enchanted Express train for an animated 360-degree rail experience with multi-sensory light and sound projections as you travel through enchanting landscapes with cherished Disney characters. The train will be pulling into Raffles City from 15 to 26 November 2023 and make a second stop at Plaza Singapura from 1 to 17 December 2023.

The first 10,000 visitors of the Enchanted Express at Raffles City and Plaza Singapura will receive a Golden Ticket, which includes a POP MART “Buy 3 Get 1 Free” eVoucher that you can use to boost your Disney collection at POP MART Lot One.

You can also collect POP MART Disney character stamps by completing daily tasks and actions on the CapitaStar App and get a chance to win S$1,000 worth of vouchers.

Tis’ the season to be jolly indeed — it’s time to ready your cameras, wallets and hearts!

Disney POP MART x CapitaLand
Multiple locations
From now till 31 Dec 2023

 

[Haymarket]

July 11, 2023

L'Officiel Singapore

NCT 127’s New Disney+ Docu-Series is An Intimate Look at Their Struggles & Successes

Debuting on Disney+ on August 30, the K-Pop group’s four-part series called “NCT 127: The Lost Boys” will show their journey being in the spotlight.

Top K-Pop boy group NCT 127 are getting their own series that will debut exclusively on Disney+ on August 30. The members–Taeil, Johnny, Taeyong, Yuta, Doyoung, Jaehun, Jungwoo, Mark, and Haechan–went into stardom full-throttle back in 2016. In a four-part series titled NCT 127: The Lost Boys, they will talk about their experiences as youths who grew up in various parts around the globe, and how fame affected them in multiple ways.

Each episode will focus on two or three members of NCT 127, as they will dive into their success and the challenges they faced along the way. NCT 127: The Lost Boys was directed by Jayil Pak, created by Cho Youngchul and Yim Pilsung. The series will run from August 30 to September 6 exclusively on Disney+.

In the lead up to the much anticipated docu-series, check out the group's latest livestream celebrating their 7th anniversary for a taste of their sparkling onscreen interactions.

 

[Haymarket]

November 28, 2023

Screen Rant

Moving's English Dub Trailer Highlights The Action & Intrigue Of Popular Korean Drama [EXCLUSIVE]

Exclusive: Screen Rant presents an English-language trailer for Hulu's Moving, showcasing superpowered black ops agents and their special children.

SUMMARY

• After its success on Hulu, the Korean drama Moving is receiving an official English dub, introducing the show to a new audience.
• The series follows superpowered South Korean spies who are trying to protect their children from a malevolent government agency while living ordinary lives.
• Moving delves into complex themes including generational trauma, espionage, and the power of parental love, setting it apart from other action-heavy projects released in Korea.

After becoming the most-watched Korean drama on Hulu in the US and Disney+ internationally, Moving is getting an official English-language dub, and Screen Rant is proud to present an exclusive first look at the trailer. Originally a webtoon by Kang Full, Moving was adapted by the same author into a 20-episode series in 2023 and quickly rose to the top of Disney+'s charts in Asian countries in addition to becoming Hulu's most popular Korean series ever. The show stars Ryu Seungryong, Han Hyojoo, and Zo Insung, who play superpowered South Korean spies hiding from a malevolent government agency and trying to ensure their children live ordinary lives despite their abilities.

Directed by Park Inje, Moving goes back and forth in time throughout the course of the season. It first explores how high school students Bongseok (Lee Jung Ha) and Huisoo (Go Younjung) navigate their world with the power of flotation and invulnerability respectively before revealing the secrets their seemingly normal parents are hiding. The ensemble cast is full of top-tier Korean talent, including Cha Taehyun, Kim Sungkyun, Kim Heewon, Moon Sunggeun, and Kim Shinrok.

​

Moving Is Breaking Barriers For K-dramas

While the big budget and cinematic special effects may be the first thing that stands out about Moving, the complexity of the story is evident even in the above trailer. Kim Dooshik (Zo Insung), Jang Joowon (Ryu Seung Ryong), and Lee Mihyun (Han Hyujoo) are introduced as elite black ops agents who are called on to fight for their country, but it's already clear that they have a murky past they must make up for. Furthermore, the missions they are forced to complete grow increasingly dubious until their superiors betray them for fear of their growing autonomy.

The second half of the trailer focuses on the fact that their powers are genetically inherited, leading to a life in hiding as they keep their children safe from the entities who would mistreat and exploit them. Try as they might, however, they cannot shake hitman Frank (Ryu Seungbeom) off the scent once their adolescent kids begin exhibiting powers beyond their control. Thus, Moving becomes a tale of not only superheroes, but generational trauma, espionage gone wrong, and the power of parental love.

Hulu's official key art above showcases the large cast of Moving and its many fascinating storylines. The past focuses on black ops agents and their mysterious missions, the present highlights the difficulty of fitting in as students and teachers, and the future is in constant danger thanks to Frank and his dogged masters. With such a complex story at hand, it's no surprise that Moving has distinguished itself from other action-heavy projects released by Korea in the last year. It has already won accolades at several Asian award shows, and now the English-language dub is sure to make it accessible to an entirely new audience.

 

[Haymarket]

November 22, 2023

The Korea Herald

Disney+ brings romance to year's end

Winter is here, and that means prime time for heartwarming love stories.

While Disney+, the flagship streaming service of US media giant Walt Disney Co., caught many viewers’ eyes with exciting superhero action flick “Moving” and spy thriller “Vigilante,” the streamer is set to wrap up the year with two romantic love stories in “Tell Me That You Love Me” and “Soundtrack #2.”

Adapted from a 1995 Japanese drama series of the same title, “Tell Me That You Love Me” revolves around hearing-impaired artist Cha Jin-woo (Jung Woo-sung) and aspiring actor Jung Mo-eun (Shin Hyun-bin).

Helmed by Kim Youn-jin, who previously directed hit romance series “Our Beloved Summer” (2021), and penned by “Love in the Moonlight” (2016) screenwriter Kim Min-jung, the 16-part series has been generating buzz before its scheduled release on Monday as Jung’s first melodrama project in 11 years.

The actor was long considered a go-to actor for melodrama, from the legendary “A Moment To Remember” (2004) in which he starred with Son Ye-jin to JTBC’s “Padam Padam” (2012), which also starred Han Ji-min.

“Tell Me That You Love Me” premieres Nov. 27. Two episodes each are released on Mondays and Tuesdays on Disney+.

Meanwhile, Disney+ original series “Soundtrack #2” presents an interesting love triangle between former college sweethearts who meet again and a new guy hoping to woo the female lead.

Starring Noh Sang-hyun from Apple TV+’s “Pachinko” (2022), Geum Sae-rok and newcomer Sohn Jeong-hyuck, the six-part romance unfolds the story of an unexpected, unique music project, which reunites the former couple as a piano tutor and student after four years and brings young singer-songwriter K (Sohn) to add fuel to this complex relationship.

Disney+ will release “Soundtrack #2” on Wednesdays starting Dec. 6.

 

[Haymarket]

November 30, 2023

Vulture

Inside Elemental’s Slow-burn Journey from Summer Flop to Year-end Hit

The critical drubbing and box-office floppage of the fire-water rom-com Elemental stood, for the better part of 2023, as one of this year’s most crushing film failures: a two-front defeat all the more curious coming from Pixar, one of filmdom’s most unfailable hit factories. Until the precise moment the opposites-attract animated romp quietly redeemed itself as an under-the-radar triumph after all. To date, Elemental has accumulated nearly $500 million in worldwide ticket sales to become — against almost all expectations — the year’s ninth highest-grossing blockbuster, the most-watched title in Disney+ history, and a frontrunner in the Best Animated Feature Oscar scrum according to reputable gurus of gold.

But that reversal of fortune has been gradual enough — sneaky in a Greatest Showman kind of way, even — to ignore if you weren’t paying attention. (Which, let’s face it, how many people outside the Mouse House C-suite really were?) To the extent that casual moviegoers not possessed of a Disney streaming subscription and a kid under the age of 10 may be aware of it at all, Elemental suffered the ignominy of arriving in theaters in June as the lowest-grossing Pixar title of all time. Costing a reported $200 million to produce, it pulled in a mere $29.6 million over opening weekend to topple the previous title holder, 1995’s Toy Story (which earned $29.1 million in its first three days; adjusted for inflation, a sum closer to $58 million). Worse still for the consistently experimental and technologically innovative animation studio, the reviews for Elemental were decidedly middling to unkind: “dull-witted and syrupy” (Deadline); “the story beats are overly familiar” (Los Angeles Times); “The movie looks good … but its undercooked concept is a problem” (Vulture’s Alison Willmore).

Adding insult to already grievous cinematic injury, industry observers and trade publications were quick to pile on the “Pixar in turmoil” narrative. After an untrammeled, three-decade run pumping out culturally enshrined smash hits including Cars, Coco, Wall-E, and Monsters, Inc., the house that Steve Jobs built had seemingly lost its mojo. During the N95 era, the studio division dumped a trio of well-reviewed features, Turning Red, Soul, and the Call Me by Your Name–esque Luca, straight onto Disney+, a move some industry peers lamented as rewiring viewer expectations in the process. “That’s taught a generation of animated movie-watchers that you can get the best stuff on TV,” an animated film executive at a rival studio complained to me around that time. “It’s going to take another generation to unteach them that. It did a lot of harm to the industry.”

Then came last year’s disastrous Lightyear — a high-concept, Mr. Potato Head– and Woody-less $200 million Toy Story spinoff that grossed just $226 million worldwide to qualify as an implosion on the launch pad. Attempting to turn the page creatively since the 2018 recusal of John Lasseter (the former Walt Disney Animation Studios chief credited with turning Pixar into a commercial powerhouse, who was toppled by allegations of too-touchy workplace behavior), Pixar’s thrice Oscar-sanctified chief creative officer, Pete Docter, faced the perception of a long commercial cold streak on his watch. And, in just the latest manifestation of Hollywood’s “What have you done for me lately?” mentality, rumors of his imminent ouster and of flagging esprit de corps inside studio ranks began to reach beyond the Burbank studio lot. “Morale is low because Pixar’s workers aren’t used to losing,” another animation executive told me on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly comment on the matter.

Precisely none of these issues have been lost on Elemental’s director, Peter Sohn. The film took seven years from inception to completion, requiring the efforts of 300-plus people and 150,000 core processors from Pixar’s proprietary “render farm” of supercomputers (by contrast, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles only took 50,000 cores and Toy Story a mere 294). In other words: vast reservoirs of technology and human sweat equity, only to land with a thud at the box office. “I was heartbroken, for sure,” the director tells Vulture over tea in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. “The film just wasn’t connecting. There was a lot of surprise. There were a lot of supportive conversations like, ‘The movie is good. We believe in the work we have done.’ There were also a lot of conversations like, ‘How did we get here?’”

A journeyman Pixar lifer — who has worked as an artist on films including Up, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles, provided the voices of Emile in Ratatouille and Sox in Lightyear, and wrote and directed 2015’s The Good Dinosaur in addition to supplying creative input to almost every major Pixar project over the last two decades — Sohn conceived the movie as a kind of passion project with direct correlations to his own life. The movie passed Pixar’s green-light process and entered the company’s notoriously iterative production stage with Docter’s explicit blessing to present a more personal vision, somewhat outside the scope of a title like Toy Story, which taps into more universal childhood themes.

Elemental’s central, opposites-attract affaire de fou between Ember, a headstrong, fiery-tempered fire woman (voiced by Leah Lewis) and Wade (Mamoudou Athie), an overly emosh, anthropomorphic puddle being/water inspector parallelled Korean American Sohn’s cross-cultural courtship of his non-Asian wife, Anna Chambers. The movie’s intergenerational subplot involving Ember taking over her immigrant father’s convenience store — an independent business the character built from the ground up and in the face of no small amount of anti–fire people bias as a refugee transplant to NYC stand-in Element City — arrives as an almost straight autobiographical rip. As a recent immigrant to the United States, Sohn’s father opened a small bodega in the late ’60s Bronx where he and his brother effectively grew up minding the shop. Both the director’s parents died during Elemental’s production, and the film is dedicated to them with an end-credits photo card. “I was very nervous because I’ve never done anything this personal,” says Sohn. “The process of making this film continued to show how scary being that vulnerable really is.”

Sandbagged by negative reviews out of its Cannes Film Festival premiere, Elemental slunk into theaters the same weekend as Warner Bros.’ high-stakes DCEU entry The Flash and faced unexpectedly stiff competition from Sony’s overperforming animated thriller Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, then in its third week in release. Despite Elemental’s craptacular sub–$30 million debut — by contrast, Pixar’s The Incredibles 2 opened to $182 million the same weekend five years earlier — the film hung around in theaters through the summer doldrums and beyond Labor Day with no other wide-release family-friendly titles to give it a run for its money at the multiplex. Which is when a strange about-face took place.

The type of “this movie sucks” buzz that scared viewers away from Elemental’s opening release frame became an ever more distant memory. And a totally different kind of word-of-mouth began to drive moviegoers toward the turnstiles: parents with little kids talking it up to other parents with little kids. Although Elemental took more than two months to cross the $150 million threshold at the domestic box office, the movie began doing robust business across Europe, Latin America, and, more than any other foreign territory, South Korea. And somewhere along the way, Elemental’s Rotten Tomatoes score crept up to 74 percent fresh on the Tomatometer with a perhaps even more crucial 93 percent audience score. “I had stopped looking at social media. I was trying to understand word of mouth and what it means,” Sohn recalls. He watched as a “wave of positive energy” built momentum. “The same forces that took it down brought it back up,” he says. “I never experienced that before.”

When Elemental debuted on Disney+ in September, it quickly became the platform’s most-watched movie of the year, racking up 26.4 million views in its first five days of release (to also reportedly rank in the top 10 streaming releases of all time). A month later, Elemental leapfrogged that number to 60 million views, surpassing such bona fide Disney hits as The Little Mermaid and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in the same time period. And the studio now expects to sell 800,000 Elemental DVDs and Blu-rays worldwide with 1.7 million digital copies moved through outlets including iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon.

An entrenched Academy Awards juggernaut, Pixar’s animated shorts and feature releases have been rewarded with Oscars gold a staggering 18 times over the decades and now find themselves almost reflexively nominated for animation’s most prestigious prize. Although this year’s Best Animated Feature competition is crowded with worthy contenders — Hayao Miyazaki’s final film The Boy and the Heron, Across the Spider-Verse (follow-up to 2019’s winner Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), and Netflix’s underdog Nimona among them — Gold Derby prognosticators currently place the film in the top three of predicted winners.

I ask Sohn if it is important to him to correct the public perception that Elemental failed to live up to expectations — to remedy this idea Pixar is creatively out of gas, given how the number of headlines proclaiming the film’s failure still greatly outweigh the ones heralding its success. “I feel like it’s important for the crew and studio to realize that people still love Pixar movies,” he says. “Doing a love story is risky these days. This romance we built has value and that was the thing that had urgency for me.”