Shanghai-based Linmon Pictures hopes another ambitious series of high-end historical dramas will provide a boost to its expanding international business.
On the second day of Tokyo's TIFFCOM entertainment market, which runs alongside the Tokyo International Film Festival, it provided an update on its ongoing mission to diversify beyond its domestic Chinese market. The company has touted a slate of new period dramas planned for 2025 and 2026, as well as projects in other genres.
The company's program includes four costume dramas spanning various hybrid genres. Meeting in the moonlight is a fantasy drama starring Xu Kai and Tian Xiwei, set “in an intertwined world of demons and Chang'an city, creating a distinctive supernatural atmosphere.” A dream within a dream will be a period romantic comedy starring Yitong Li and Yuning Liu, “combining traditional Wei and Jin aesthetics with cyberpunk elements to blend ancient culture with futuristic mechanical design.” Other upcoming projects include romantic comedies In the moonlight AND A journey to Glowwhich have yet to reveal the key concepts.
Linmon is one of the rare mainland television producers to achieve notable success both at home and abroad. The company had already sold two seasons of its romantic drama series Twenty years of life to Netflix for distribution in territories outside of mainland China. The show proved to be a success in Chinese-speaking territories, ranking in Netflix's top 10 in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in Southeast Asian countries with large Chinese diaspora populations. Netflix also acquired Linmon's drama The legend of Fu Yaowhich made it to the top 10 streamers in Korea. Disney+, meanwhile, has acquired the company's romance show A little desire for love for streaming in Southeast Asian markets. In recent years, the company has also expanded production in various Asian markets, turning its biggest Chinese titles into local-language programs.
Company executives will be in Tokyo this week to pitch their projects to regional buyers and to support Taiwanese-Burmese director Midi Z's arthouse drama The invisible sisterwhich will make its international premiere in the main competition of the Tokyo festival. The studio also revealed that it has greenlit a second season of the thriller show Under the skin.
“As one of the most popular suspense dramas in China in 2022, the first season also became the project with the highest completion rate on Tencent Video in that year,” says Roy Lu, general manager of Linmon International.
“As one of China's leading film and television production companies, Linmon Pictures has, over the past decade, consistently provided premium content to audiences around the world,” said Zhou Yuan, co-founder and executive vice president of Linmon Media, at the company's TIFFCOM seminar Thursday. “Alongside high-concept modern dramas like Nothing but thirty AND A small meetingLinmon has devoted significant effort to producing period dramas with deep cultural resonance and high production standards.
In an interview with The Hollywood journalist On Wednesday, Zhou spoke in more depth about Linmon's international strategy and Z's The invisible sisterwhich is in competition at the Tokyo Film Festival.
The invisible sister it feels more like a film that will be successful internationally, given that you will be submitting it to festivals. Does it seem built for travel?
The story is obviously very global and the message itself is very universal. This is a story about the repression that women are facing and how they fight against it and how they struggle with it. This message is very universal and people from different cultural backgrounds can understand and identify with it. It can happen anywhere in the world, it can happen in Hong Kong, it can happen abroad, it can happen in Europe, anywhere.
But they want to push this film out of the domestic market, because there is a tendency for Chinese films to focus only on the domestic market.
Yes, this is definitely the goal he really wants to achieve The invisible sister ship abroad and reach a larger audience, especially people who are not very familiar with Chinese films, this is the target audience. We want to bring this film to outsiders so they can see what China is like, what Chinese people are going through.
Let's zoom out a little. You can correct me, but in the last five years there has been a kind of insularity in the Chinese film industry. Hollywood films no longer seem to be popular and local content prevails. Is this right? Is the public no longer interested in the external product?
I think so [the lack of interest in Hollywood product] it is temporary, seen from the audience's point of view. For example, The invisible sister will be released in theaters in China over the weekend, and at the same time, there is Poison 3 also released in China. And you know it, Poison It's going pretty well there too. So people continue to go to the cinema for foreign films, overseas. The problem is that a lot of Hollywood movies in the last couple of years are very, very commercial and not a lot of new things are happening. It's all the same thing, the same formula, all very franchise-driven. That's why people get tired. [The Chinese audience] I want to see more diverse and different original content from all over the world, not just Hollywood and not just those kind of superhero movies. The taste of the Chinese public: now prefers much broader and more diverse content than before.
A quick question about TIFFCOM and the Tokyo Film Festival: How important are the market and the festival for your company?
It's definitely important to be here, because it's still a very big market in Asia. There's a lot of history in this market and a lot of people show up, and it's literally a party for all the people in our industry. It's also a business opportunity to come here to meet all these different people, as well as meet the people we work with, the people we want to work with, and to really build connections. It's probably just as important as [Hong Kong] Filmart and Singapore [ATF] for us. And the Tokyo Film Festival, I think, is definitely one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world, especially for the Asian film market. [There’s a lot of big name filmmakers] here, many young directors. For many young directors, going to Tokyo is the first step to reach the global market.