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Disney+ is about to name a new commissioner in Australia and has not ruled out a return to production in Southeast Asia, Jon Wax, executive VP of international original television at Disney Entertainment, said Wednesday
at the Busan International Film Festival.
Wax, set out the streamer’s Asia-Pacific plans at a fireside chat at the Park Hyatt Busan, backed by the Motion Picture Association, the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), the festival and Disney+. The session came as Disney+ moves to triple its local-language output around the world.
Disney+ is ramping up local original spending in Australia, Wax said. Turning to the rest of Asia, he said: “There’s many other countries, and, you know, we’re not in many of them yet, but, again, in the spirit of we need to walk before we run, we’re sort of doubling down on the territories that are working, but the hope is, given a long enough timeline, we will be in many more countries than where we currently are.”
Asked whether production would resume in markets such as Indonesia after earlier cutbacks, Wax said Disney+ is exploring specific titles there. “It is absolutely on the menu. We just need some time to execute,” he said.
Local versions of Korean unscripted hit “Battle of Fates,” confirmed in development in March, are now in prep, Wax said. In the supernatural competition series, practitioners of shamanism, tarot, face reading and saju go up against each other. It became the biggest series premiere ever on Disney+ in Korea and has since led to a spinoff, “House of Fates.” Wax said the U.S. team moved quickly when Choi Yeon-woo, who runs the Disney+ content operation in Korea, and her team first brought the show to them.
Wax said the show felt culturally distinct, given the privileged position its subject holds in Korean society, “but every society on Earth has their practitioners of this. And we felt like if this works, this could be something that could be shot in other countries.”
Unscripted is part of “any global streamer’s healthy diet of a well-rounded slate,” Wax said, pointing to the long tradition of the genre across the region. “But also, of course, for cost and for speed and expediency, those are really good players to have on any slate, where you can get some of these shows mounted a little bit faster than you can some of the bigger scripted shows,” he said.
Wax acknowledged that Disney came to local originals “maybe a little bit later than Netflix, but really we’re playing catch-up in a way that’s very exciting now.” He pointed to recent quarterly earnings calls, where non-U.S. content has featured prominently. “From the transition from Bob Iger to Josh D’Amaro… he has picked up that baton and, if anything, has only increased it,” Wax said.
For creators weighing their options in an established streaming market, Wax set out what he sees as Disney’s approach. “We pinpoint creators that we want to work with, who have really fertile ideas, and we are able to, I think, discern shows that have some stickiness to them,” he said. The aim, he added, is to give those creators a wide berth while keeping the quality bar high.
Disney+ will keep adapting known IP when it has a built-in audience, Wax said, but “part of Disney’s brand is also, I think what is expected of Disney, brand-wise, from audiences all around the world, is to generate new stories, not just adapt existing stories. And you may quibble with that in terms of some of the recent track record, certainly on the Disney movie side.”
He said he regularly tells the Korean development team that he doesn’t want to rely only on big IP or a big actor. “We love those things, but if the idea is potent enough on its own, then we will explore that even without a known story and a known actor,” Wax said.
On Korea, Wax said the market had matured to the point where its shows face the same tests as U.S. content. “It can be slick, it can be well-produced, but that’s not enough. It has to have a good character journey,” he said. Competition is fierce, he added, but the talent bench gets deeper every day.
Disney+ started out in Korea in 2021 with shows that skewed toward male audiences through action and violence, Wax said, but has since found that romance titles travel, citing “The Remarried Empress” and “Perfect Crown,” the latter made in partnership with broadcaster MBC. “We really want our Korean content first and foremost to work in the Korean market. If it doesn’t work locally… it won’t work globally, in our opinion,” Wax said.
Burbank is now building ways to spot Korean shows that pick up heat after launch and push them further afield, he added.
“The Remarried Empress,” which premieres in Busan on Friday, is adapted from one of the most popular webtoons by some metrics. The series puts an all-Korean cast in Western Baroque costume and was shot largely in Europe. Wax said the deciding factor was the emotional arc between lead characters Navier and Sovieshu. “The journey itself, it tells a story, it’s not just about spectacle,” he said.
Wax said the show bridges the Disney brand of princesses and castles. “But I do want to stress, and I think this crowd will know, that’s not all we’re about. We will do things that are pretty far afield of what Disney is prototypically known for,” he said.
“The Koreans,” the streamer’s upcoming reworking of FX series “The Americans,” came from a Korean producer who was a fan of the original and saw it as ripe for adaptation on the Korean Peninsula. Disney+ secured the rights, and Wax said he helped clear some technical hurdles along the way. His department now makes a more deliberate effort to find shows that can cross between regions, he said, from France to Argentina or from Korea back to the U.S.
Wax also singled out the window-sharing co-production model with local broadcasters, which Disney calls “currents,” as an important part of its Korean business. “I’m hoping that we can sort of lift all boats a little bit with some more partnerships, and we really seek those out, and we have an entire team devoted to that,” he said. Upcoming Korean titles include modern-day vampire series “Portraits of Delusion.”
Anime is another priority. Disney has begun turning its own branded IP into anime, with “Twisted-Wonderland” performing well, and an anime based on Hideo Kojima’s game “Death Stranding” is on the way. Wax said anime titles have a longer tail than standard performance metrics capture. “It does perform for us, and we want to do more,” he said. “We just don’t have enough of it now.”
Japanese live-action will take longer. “I do not want to make broad cultural generalizations here, but the speed of business in Japan tends to be a little more, shall we say, deliberate,” Wax said, adding that Japanese rights holders need time to trust a partner with their IP. “Gannibal” has been the standout so far, and a live-action slate is coming.
Pressed on whether the local-first rule holds in Japan, given that “Shogun” played better abroad than at home, Wax said Disney+ can still build up its subscriber base there. “We need to walk before we run in Japan,” he said. “The Korean content has already shown its ability to break out, and so we’re riding that wave a little more readily, but the Japanese content, we really want to make sure it works locally first.”
Disney+ is also testing microseries, podcast adaptations, live podcasts and live events, though Wax said some of that depends on the platform’s technical capacity, which is being worked on. The company is exploring microdramas in Mexico, among other markets, and a separate department handles the format. Wax called microdramas “a mode of storytelling that audiences respond to” and said he sees them coexisting with traditional TV.
At 20th Century Fox Television, Wax said, his team experimented with shorter dramas that didn’t work. “I think it’s exciting to see people start to tell stories in that format,” he said, while adding: “I don’t think we’re going to run only to that side of the boat and have the boat tip over into a shallow pool of short-form shows.”
He said that when asked for his creative opinion on microdramas, he has said he needs to “bone up” on the form. “The rhythms of some of that storytelling are just very different from my training and maybe not even of my generation at this point,” he said.
Reaching younger viewers is “the question on the tip of everyone’s tongue, not just at Disney,” Wax said, adding that his team includes younger staff more attuned to trends. While the Disney name is tied to younger audiences, the local originals push is aimed at general entertainment. On AI, Wax said it is not part of his day-to-day remit, but speaking for himself, “I’m really interested in AI as a means to augment traditional storytelling.”
Wax said he didn’t believe Disney+ had yet made local-language features in Asia-Pacific, though it has done some in Latin America, and that the company is open to doing so in the region one day.
Wax joined Disney about three years ago from Amazon Studios, where he was head of global content synergy and worked on shows including “Fallout” and “The Rings of Power.” He previously held senior creative roles at YouTube Originals and 20th Century Fox Television, working on “24,” “Bones” and “Prison Break.” He said watching “Moving,” sent to him by the manager who hired him, helped persuade him to make the move.
Looking five years out, Wax said he wants Disney+ to become a daily destination in Asia-Pacific, with viewers who come in through a local Korean original finding other shows on the service. “I’d like us to have offerings that are attractive enough that… you don’t just come to Disney+ for specific titles, but that you open up the app and you’re excited to see what Disney+ is serving up to you that you haven’t even heard of before,” he said.
