Disney APAC Content Chief Carol Choi On Disney+’s Premium Streaming Pivot, Live Sports Rights & Korea’s Ongoing Influence
After pulling back on original content production in Southeast Asia and doubling down on efforts in Korea and Japan over the past year, Disney+ is focused on creating a premium service in Asia, instead of a mass one.
That’s according to Carol Choi, Disney’s Executive Vice-President for APAC (ex-India), Original Content Strategy, who has spoken exclusively to Deadline about her plans for the streamer, which first launched in the region three years ago as part of the global Disney+ rollout. Since then, the streamer reset and Disney’s focus on profit over subs progress has changed Choi’s focus.
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“As the market and the Disney+ service continue to evolve, we continue to evaluate where we should focus our efforts and for the lack of a better term, get most bang out of our buck,” she said. “If you look at our Southeast Asia product offering, we’ve pivoted. It used to be a mass strategy, just to grab market share. Over the last three years since we launched, we’ve slowly increased our price to now become a more premium service, in order for us to continue to build up the base to what Disney+ is as a service.”
Choi said Disney+ had “moved to a pricing level that matches the type of product that we’re offering” and that once it gets to “the next stage,” she will evaluate what sort of investment would continue to expand the subs base. “The last couple years were like an adjustment period and we’ve had some great results, so we know that there is demand for it. It’s just whether we have the business model that warrants it.”
Choi was speaking to Deadline at the Disney APAC Content Showcase in Singapore, addressing topics such as originals, live sports programming and future Southeast Asia plans.
During the event, Choi unveiled new Korean titles on the Disney+ slate, including The Murky Stream and The Manipulated and the streamer’s expansion into Japanese unscripted content, in collaboration with Nippon TV. Japanese anime projects such as BULLET/BULLET and Disney Twisted-Wonderland The Animation were on the upcoming Disney+ slate, highlighting how original titles from those two countries have remained core, while content has been reined in elsewhere.
Indonesia was initially marked as a key growth market in Southeast Asia, with Disney+ producing originals such as Blood Curse and Tira under its Hotstar label. When asked about whether Disney+ will return to make an Indonesian original again, Choi was guarded, saying only, “It’s being examined. It’s under evaluation.”
Successful examinations have taken place in other parts of Asia, of course. Choi said that her team has found a formula for Korean and Japanese scripted shows that works for Disney+’s content offer. She added that “heavy scripted” shows with “very complex, strong plot lines,” in genres like action, crime and thriller, work well for the streamer in Asia.
Ad-Supported Asia
During Disney CEO Bob Iger’s most recent quarterly earnings call, he said that 30% of global Disney+ users are on the ad-supported tier. In the U.S., the figure is slightly higher at 37%. When asked about Disney+’s ad-supported strategy in Asia, given the strategic pivot toward a more premium service with a high average revenue per user (ARPU), Choi said: “Asia is particularly difficult because the markets are so different, so there can’t be one consistent strategy — especially when you look at the basics of growth, whether there is a cable business, where advertisers are spending, and whether it’s efficient for us to offer an ad tier.”
Choi added that pricing tiers in Asia also depend on when Disney+ will be “ready to have sports integrated” into its program offerings. Rival streamers such as Netflix have made big moves in live sports. Most recently, the livestream of Mike Tyson and Jake Paul’s boxing match (although not without its tech issues) drew huge audiences, and data exclusively shared with Deadline last week showed that around 11.1 million unique viewers from Asia tuned in live or as-live.
Regionally in Asia, Korea’s TVING CEO Choi Ju-hui recently stated that gaining broadcast rights for the KBO, Korea’s top baseball league, has driven huge waves of subscribers to the platform. For Indonesia’s Vidio streaming platform, broadcast rights to the English Premier League as well as UEFA Champions League, among others, are a core part of its growth strategy.
With Disney+ adding an ESPN tile to its streaming platform on December 4 and forays into buying live rights to the UEFA Europa League in Denmark and Sweden, it seems that live sports is just on the horizon for Disney+ in Asia, but Choi remained tight-lipped on the streamer’s live sports plans in the region. “We’re not ready to have a specific position on that right at this moment,” said Choi. “In Asia, we know that the first step to try to solidify our base is through local content.”
Korea Prospects
Across Disney+’s newly-announced titles for its upcoming Korean and Japanese slate, only one title — Tempest — has a female director (Kim Hee-won). In March this year, the Korean Film Council (KOFIC) also released a report noting that among the 35 Korean commercial films released last year — defined as films with a production budget exceeding 3 billion won (US$2.25 million) — only one film was directed by a woman. This film was action thriller The Point Men, directed by Yim Soon-rye.
On whether Choi is looking to bring more female directors onboard Disney+ projects, she said: “It has to be the right project. I don’t know if we purposely seek that out. It also depends on particular industry norms. We obviously don’t discriminate.
“Many of our projects have strong female writers and writers in the Korean content ecosystem also play a very, very strong role. I know that some of our directors used to be film directors, so maybe those are various contributing factors to why they tend to skew more male, but if there are the right projects or the right opportunities, obviously we’d love to see if we can bring more female directors on board.”
She also pointed out that several upcoming Disney+ Korean original titles have female screenwriters, including Hyper Knife (Kim Sun-hee) and Nine Puzzles (Lee Eun-mi).
Choi refers to herself as a “Hong Kong-born Chinese.” She told Deadline that Hong Kong films and shows, as well as Japanese content, strongly influenced her taste and sensibilities in entertainment while growing up.
She worked for Disney in various roles in China from 2006, then headed up The Walt Disney Company Korea, before being appointed Managing Director of The Walt Disney Company Japan.
“I moved out of Hong Kong at the age of 12 and when I first went to the U.S., I struggled to understand why certain things were popular, and I also kept my ties to to Hong Kong and Asia,” said Choi. “If you look at the whole Asian content trend on the movie side, Hong Kong was very dominant and action-filled. On the drama side, Japan was really up there in the ’90s and early 2000s, [with films] like Long Vacation and Tokyo Love Story. I distinctly remember there was this heart-shaped crystal featured in one of the movies that became popular. That has influenced many content creators and storytellers.
“Now, you see a lot of those type of influences shifting toward and coming from Korea. Hopefully, we can bring some of that popularity and spread it to other markets beyond Korea. But right now, definitely the trends are being set by Korea.”
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