News

Stories about fine-dining chefs, tobacco artisans and detective bloggers have burst into life on screens across Southeast Asia. Streaming giants in the region are increasingly placing their series bets on creators armed with a glittering list of prizes from the international festival circuit, and independent filmmakers and producers are making high-production-value shows with small-to-midrange budgets. The result? A veritable “prestige TV” wave on streamers. It’s a development sure to drive chatter at the Asia TV Forum & Market, which is part of the larger Singapore Media Festival umbrella running from Nov. 30 to Dec. 10.

After winning awards at the Berlin and Toronto festivals, Indonesian director Kamila Andini has kept busy with the Netflix series Cigarette Girl and the Amazon film 4 Seasons in Java. An ambitious period drama revolving around Indonesia’s clove cigarette industry in the 1960s, Cigarette Girl has ranked on Netflix’s global top 10 list for non-English series for two consecutive weeks,...

Getting In Front Of The Competition

The International Olympic Committee said on Thursday that Swiss-based, Chinese-owned Infront Sports & Media would handle broadcast right sales in much of Asia for the next series of Summer and Winter games.

The deal covers 22 territories including Afghanistan, Brunei, Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam – but not China, Japan or South Korea, and runs 2026-2032. That means it will cover the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and the Los Angeles 2028 and Brisbane 2032 Summer games. The 2030 Winter Olympics, which have yet to be allocated a host, and all Youth Olympic Games during this period will also be covered.

Infront, which is headed by Philippe Blatter and has been owned by China’s Dalian Wanda since 2015, replaces the Japanese advertising and marketing giant Dentsu, which had handled the rights...

This weekend, Netflix is welcoming a drama thriller TV series, a comedy TV series, the return of a young detective, and the final season of an acclaimed TV series. Last weekend, the streaming giant added the Singaporean mystery series Mr. Midnight: Beware The Monsters, the action-fantasy movie Blade of the 47 Ronin, and the animated movie Hotel Transylvania 2, along with the horror anthology TV series Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, the drama movie The Good Nurse, the epic anti-war movie All Quiet on the Western Front, season 6 of Big Mouth, and the stop-motion horror comedy Wendell & Wild.

This weekend, and as it does on the first days of every month, Netflix will add a variety of licensed content, such as the action movie Oblivion, the drama movie Still Alice, the action thriller Man on a Ledge, the sports drama Moneyball, the rom-com Notting Hill, the biographical action movie Captain Phillips,...

This weekend, Netflix is welcoming more Halloween content with an anthology horror series and a stop-motion horror comedy movie, along with a drama movie, a German movie, and the sixth season of a popular animated TV series. Last weekend, Netflix welcomed a variety of international content with the Indian action movie Super Senior Heroes, the South African movie The Valley of a Thousand Hills, and the Indian rom-com Kristina Vrinda Vihari, along with the first episodes of volume 3 of Unsolved Mysteries, the fantasy movie The School for Good and Evil, the Australian movie The Stranger, and the drama TV series From Scratch.

This weekend, on the licensed content front, Netflix will add the Singaporean mystery series Mr. Midnight: Beware The Monsters, the action-fantasy movie Blade of the 47 Ronin, and the animated movie Hotel Transylvania 2. As for original content, the streaming giant will see the arrival of a horror...