The Walt Disney Company is ramping up its local content investments in Japan and Korea as it enters a new phase of scaled production, while plotting expansion of its ESPN sports offering beyond Australia and New Zealand.
Luke Kang, president of The Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific, says the streamer is maturing its regional strategy after four years of laying groundwork in most markets. Disney+ is now focusing on high-quality productions from Japan and Korea that can travel globally, while monitoring emerging opportunities in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.
“We’ve been in the region now for about four or five years, and I think most of our markets are in the fourth year post launch,” Kang tells Variety. “We always looked at the first few years as a period of setting the table and building the foundation.” He was speaking with Variety on the sidelines of the Disney+ originals preview event at Hong Kong Disneyland Resort.
The company’s upcoming Asia Pacific slate spans anime, Korean drama, unscripted content and cross-border romantic comedies, including adaptations of Kojima Hideo’s “Death Stranding Isolations” (working title), Japan-Korea series “Merry Berry Love,” and webtoon-based titles like “The Remarried Empress.”
“We’re working with the top creators in the region,” Kang says. “We know we’re not in the volume game. We want to make sure that we create compelling stories and bring compelling stories to the audience.”
Since 2021, Disney+ has produced more than 150 APAC originals. The company is now concentrating resources on Japan and Korea, where Kang believes scaled, high-quality productions can be created with global appeal.
“We’ve learned that great stories, great storytelling cuts through boundaries,” he says. “We also have learned that creativity exists in many different pockets.”
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Japan represents a particular area of focus. While the country has long been recognized for high-quality anime, Kang sees it emerging as a source for compelling live-action dramas.
“We feel that we can produce the quality of product that can compete globally in these markets,” he says. “Right now we’re focused on Japan and Korea, because we feel that’s where the scaled productions can come out of.”
The company is also tapping into Asia’s rich pipeline of source material, from webtoons and web novels to traditional literature and folktales. Kang notes that crowdsourcing platforms like webtoons allow Disney to identify popular stories before adaptation.
“The ability of anybody to tell a great story has now been magnified,” he says. “The other great thing is we know what’s been popular. That gives us the ability to focus our resources on the most popular stories.”
The upcoming slate also includes unscripted content such as “Battle of Fates,” which pits fortune tellers and oracles against each other, and “Travis Japan Summer Vacation!! in the USA,” a docuseries following the seven-member group on a 10-day American road trip.
Disney+ is monitoring Asia’s microdrama boom, particularly its explosive growth in mainland China, though Kang says the company hasn’t made definitive plans to enter that space.
“We’ve been keeping an eye on microdramas for a long time,” he says. “It’s very early stages, but highly engaging. We do think it should be in the mix of the way we tell stories in the future.”
On the sports front, Disney launched ESPN on Disney+ in Australia and New Zealand as a beachhead for regional expansion. The company is now exploring a tiered strategy that combines regional sports rights with locally popular content.
“There are very few single sports that cut across the entire region,” Kang explains. The company is coordinating its ESPN expansion with the availability of sports rights, which vary by market and don’t become available simultaneously.
Disney has been experimenting with event-based sports, including broadcasting a friendly soccer match in Korea, while it evaluates longer-term rights acquisitions.
In Southeast Asia, Disney has shifted strategy from a mass-market approach under the former Disney+ Hotstar brand, which is now rebranded Disney+, to focusing on higher average revenue per user and specific audience segments. This has led to reduced local content production in those markets, though Kang says the company remains connected to regional creative communities.
“We’re keeping an eye on Indonesia and Thailand and the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia,” he says. “As our business grows and expands, we will continue to evaluate what we want to do out of those markets.”
Kang emphasizes that Disney’s approach centers on creating content with a strong home-market foundation that can travel internationally, citing the success of films like “Dangal,” which earned $198 million in China, besides being a massive hit in its native India.
“I firmly believe that content needs to have a home base,” he says. “Great content will travel, and great stories will travel beyond borders. But you always need that home base for every content.“
From Variety US