South Korean executive Jeongin Hong wears many hats as the president and CEO of multiplex chain Megabox, investor-distributor Plus M Entertainment and media outfit Contentree JoongAng. His scope is perhaps not surprising considering the reach of his family’s media business and intent to further internationalise Korean content.
“Korean content has always travelled quite well compared to other countries, but always in a niche market,” he says. “But people have now started to watch Squid Game, All Of Us Are Dead, Hellbound and Extraordinary Attorney Woo in local language with subtitles [on global streamers].
“There is a uniqueness in Korean storytelling. I’m a huge believer — I have to be. This year, I’m spending more than $600m on content creation.”
Megabox is one of the top three multiplex chains in Korea, while investor-distributor Plus M Entertainment (formerly Megabox Plus M), ranked second — after CJ ENM — with 19% of last year’s box office for locally produced films, according to the Korean Film Council.
The company had 2022’s top box-office hit in Don Lee-starrer The Roundup, which it released with ABO Entertainment. The action film sequel recorded 12.69 million admissions and $102.8m (krw131.3bn) at cinemas.
“The pandemic raised people’s bar to come out to theatres, but if everybody says the content is good, they will come watch it,” says Hong of The Roundup, the only film to surpass 10 million admissions in South Korea last year.
Plus M also backed Hunt, the directorial debut of Squid Game actor Lee Jung-jae. It premiered at Cannes last May and drew 4.35 million admissions and $35.9m (krw44.6bn) after the company released it locally in August.
“Jung-jae had never been a director, but he has been in this industry for 30 years and worked with the best of the best,” says Hong. “The most important talent for a director is to have a concrete vision for transforming a script into visual content.”
He credits Eugene Kim, Plus M’s Content 1 and Global Business team leader, and Jung Se Lee, Contents General Management vice president, for championing the project before he joined Megabox in late 2021, as well as continuing to find and back others.
“The only thing I can do is find the right people and give them the right cash flow,” says Hong, who half-jokingly emphasises he went to a science high school before majoring in economics at Princeton, and is “not a content guy”. His experience includes working in private equity at Boston Consulting and Goldman Sachs, and creating corporate development strategy — especially in M&A and investment opportunities — within the family-run JoongAng Group conglomerate.
Contentree JoongAng is the majority shareholder of SLL (formerly JTBC Studios), the major South Korean drama production studio whose stable of 17 production companies are responsible for globally popular series such as Hellbound, All Of Us Are Dead and The Summer I Turned Pretty.
The last of these was made by US indie studio wiip, in which the Korean company acquired a majority stake from CAA in summer 2021, in the aftermath of the Writers Guild of America standoff with agencies that ended with the latter divesting majority stakes in their content divisions.
Hong, who led the deal for JTBC Studios, says he is looking to create a “truly international” project that would see a collaboration between Korean talent with Hollywood infrastructure and budget.
This year, SLL is going to produce 35-40 scripted series, and five to eight feature films such as Climax Studio’s Netflix original Jung_E.
Broader base
Plus M is diversifying to produce series to hedge risk and continue working with film talent who have gravitated to TV. But primarily, it aims to release six to eight features a year. Alongside at least one tentpole a year, Hong asks his team to find an experimental or riskier small film worth investing in and have at least one distinctive kind of genre film — whether horror, thriller or female-driven.
At the European Film Market, Plus M is showing promos for noir Hopeless (aka Hwa-Ran) — one of those “experimental” projects the company believes in, produced by Sanai Pictures (Hunt), and Samjin Company English Class director Lee Jong-pil’s action drama Escape — while having a market screening for thriller Don’t Buy The Seller.
Plus M has a raft of further upcoming titles including 2023 tentpole Seoul Spring, a political drama from director Kim Sung-soo (Asura: The City Of Madness), and Bulk, a hard-boiled action thriller series with Sanai Pictures, directed by Park Noori (Money) and set in the dark side of Seoul’s trendy Gangnam area.
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