K-drama giant CJ to spend one trillion won yearly to fight Hollywood

CJ ENM plans to spend one trillion won (S$972 million) annually on content, as South Korea’s largest entertainment company tries to better compete with Hollywood and pull its business out of a funk.

CJ executives issued that pledge while describing how Korea’s entertainment industry is in crisis mode – despite the explosive popularity of K-pop and K-drama. Local players such as CJ are struggling with rising production costs as well as falling ad revenue from local platforms. At the same time, Netflix has taken the lead on distributing K-dramas such as Squid Game worldwide.

On Friday (Oct 4), CJ – which backed the Oscar-winning 2019 black comedy Parasite – promised to invest more on content than any of its local peers. Spanning movie theatres and production houses to local video streaming, CJ thinks the business needs big investment to become truly international.

“The content media industry is said to be in crisis, with more competition than ever before and a rapidly changing ecosystem, but I think there is definitely an opportunity in it,” chief executive officer Yoon Sang-hyun said during a forum at the Busan International Film Festival. “We will find solutions together and we want to create a virtuous circle that our content travels around the world.”

In an effort to overcome the industrial downturn, CJ’s affiliates plan to go international.

Studio Dragon, the studio behind Netflix’s The Glory and romantic comedy series Love Next Door, is seeking to produce shows for the US and Japanese local markets. Its streaming platform Tving also aims to expand into major markets including the US, South-east Asia and Japan. And CJ is exploring new markets such as the Middle East and India. BLOOMBERG