Forging A New Path: How Southeast Asia’s Content Creators Hope To Create Their Own Korean Wave

Southeast Asia content makers have had it tough in recent times. Not only was the streamer money that briefly flooded the region reduced as global cuts bit, but they’ve seen demand for Japanese and Korean content reach new heights, while the rise of streaming in India has become a major narrative across the continent. Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video have all committed large funding pots to Asia, but the question is, how much can Southeast Asia specifically score? 

Those we have spoken to in the likes of Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia talk of the difficult economic climate and belt-tightening over production budgets. Streaming originals have been ditched and free-to-air networks are seeing TV advertising spend move to social media. 

Mark Francis, Chief Content and Strategy Officer at Indonesia’s largest streamer, Vidio, says multiple global streaming services spending big on productions was unlikely to last. “As it turns out, paying those kinds of budget for local series only makes sense economically to one global player, not four or five, and that one global player left is Netflix,” he adds. “That’s not to say the others won’t come back.”

Producers believe that with a downturn in commissions, the importance of bolstering development has become paramount, so that scripts and projects are ready to go during the next funding boom  —  whenever that comes.

Vidio has doubled down on domestic talent. Francis, a former Warner Bros. Discovery exec, points to Indonesia’s strengths in the action and horror genres, and cites talent like Timo Tjahjanto and Joko Anwar, who have achieved success globally. These genres are expensive to work in, which is why most stories from the space end up as films in Indonesia. Yet, Francis has found a way to build on the market’s appetite for Indonesian action series. “We acknowledge that action series do very well for us, but recognize the need to diversify and grow reach, so I looked at that and thought, ‘Let’s not go find an entirely new forest,’ but instead ask, ‘What’s the branch?’ We landed with action-comedy and action-romance as the two main threads we’re developing.”

Vidio once used to produce around 30 series in a year, the