GrX Studio has set its sights on international expansion in line with its leading position within Taiwan’s film and TV production industry.
At a quick event on Monday on the sidelines of the Busan International Film Festival, the company announced plans to invest about $45 million over five years in 15 Mandarin-language series and five horror films through a new fund.
The launch event also included a selection of current shows from the group, formerly known as Greener Grass Productions. It was previously responsible for ‘Copycat Killer’, a series that has performed strongly for streaming giant Netflix.
Taiwanese actor Ning Chang and Vietnamese actor Lien Binh Phat of ‘The Outlaw Doctor’, a crime series now in post-production that GrX co-produced with the Public Television Service Foundation (PTS) and Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), and Korean celebrity Jinyoung and Taiwanese actress Moon Lee from “The Photo from 1977.” The title is a romance film facilitated by the Hakka Affairs Council, with script development supported by the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) and partially funded by the Hakka Public Communication Foundation.
Other titles confirmed at the event included: a horror film “Trapped in Yellow”; a boy’s love (BL) feature film “Wild With You,” produced by Golden Bell Awards-winning producer Phoebe Ma; and the thriller series “The Ones I Killed and the Ones Who Killed Me,” currently in development and based on the popular Japanese novel by Akira Higashiyama.
A historical series set in Taiwan and Japan, titled “KOHAKU: The Traitor of the Night,” is directed by Lien Yi-chi and Kentaro Hagiwara. A story about reconstruction and imaginative thoughts about the future of the human race. The show consists of eight 45-minute episodes. If it is successful, GrX expects it to last three seasons.
GrX Studio will also produce a reality food show “Go! To go! Michelin” and handles international distribution of a recently launched Taiwanese and K-pop variety show “SCOOL.”
The $45 million fund initiative, known as ‘Asia Spring’, aims to further strengthen the company and Taiwan’s position as a growing hub for Asian co-production. “Through this initiative, we hope to invite exceptional filmmakers from different countries and regions to collaborate with us,” said strategy and chief investment officer Dennis Wu. Taiwanese companies are experiencing something of a renaissance as a source of Chinese-language productions for the Asian region, at a time when many companies in mainland China and Hong Kong are moving in different directions and international streamers can no longer operate in the mainland.
Wu said the current slate is unified around the themes of comfort, excitement and subversion. He said the studio has a network of branches in Taiwan, mainland China and Singapore, and the distribution network must then be expanded and stabilized.
GrX Studio