Region can boast an array of hit films and growing animation prowess, but suffers from weak cross-border distribution.
Almost every language has a phrase equivalent to the English idiom about not being able to see the forest for the trees. And in the film industry it is easy to be preoccupied by top line box office trends – especially those comparing wobbly recent performances with the pre-Covid era. But that would risk losing sight of the many and very real Asian success stories that are close to hand.
The large and diverse cinema industries of East Asia have all been affected by the rise of streaming, the addictive richness of social media and the emergence micro-dramas as competition for audience attention and spending.
Consumers in some cases have re-evaluated their leisure behaviour, putting increased emphasis on value for money entertainment, new, unique or live-experiences and those goods and services given additional value through friends or influencers. In parallel, consumers are de-prioritising merely average activities, breaking old habits such as cinemagoing by appointment and they are taking more time to decide what is worth their attention and spending.
In many of Asia’s national film markets, Hollywood and its stars have lost some of their sheen, ‘franchise fatigue’ has set in and attendance has become more selective. Factors such as FOMO (fear of missing out) and large format cinema equipment may exert more sway over ticket-buying decisions today than the taken-for-granted special effects prowess of Hollywood’s VFX studios.
And, as US blockbusters and star power have waned, they have slowed overall box office recovery in East Asia’s most mature markets. Even when social distancing restrictions stopped being an impediment, the 2023-26 period has seen operators closing cinemas or reducing their screen counts and seat numbers in South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.
Gross revenues in Japan fell by a compound annual rate of 11% between 2019 and 2024, according to ComScore, before a 32% rebound in 2025. In Korea, the average annual box office decline was 12%, a slide which has caused investors to flee, major producers to halve their output volume and incentivised talent to move into other media, notably TV and series production.
Golden Harvest, one of the most iconic names in Asian cinema, closed its last cinemas in Hong Kong at the end of 2025, having previously pulled out of the exhibition markets of Taiwan, Malaysia and Mainland China. The company remains the largest cinema operator in Singapore, where it is branded Golden Village. But it describes the problem with audiences and its business thus: “While cinemas provide a distinctive entertainment experience, it is essential to diversify content offerings and enhance service quality.” The company’s latest mission statement is: “To transform our cinemas into integrated lifestyle hubs, positioning them as premier entertainment destinations for consumers.”
While increased competition for eyeballs seems a universal phenomenon, some markets have continued to see net expansion of cinema complexes and circuits. These include the previously under-developed markets of Vietnam and Indonesia, which both have large, young populations and growing economies.
(Exceptionally, Mainland China, where economic growth has slowed, and which is staring at a demographic timebomb, has also seen growth in screen numbers. But China’s cinema building has been a two-decade-long policy direction from Beijing. And with over 92,000 screens now in operation, building has nearly run its course.)
But, whether mature or still developing, nearly all of Asia’s cinema markets have one thing in common in the post-Covid era: powerful examples of local films achieving box office success in their home markets.
These have lightened some of the industry’s prevailing gloom and challenged the narrative that cinema is dead or has completely given way to streaming video.
While overall box office numbers in Hong Kong have declined since a brief 2022-23 recovery, records for individual local titles have been broken by multiple different Hong Kong productions in the past two years. In Indonesia, records for local films were broken twice in 2025 by films as different as family animation Jumbo and comedy Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!. And, in earning some RMB15.5 billion (EUR1.94 billion) in China last year, Ne Zha 2 raised the bar for highest performance by a Chinese production, for a film in any single market and became the most lucrative animation film in world history.
- Vietnam too is enjoying a spree, with the all-time record for an individual film broken four times since 2023 and is one of the very few countries worldwide which actually has surpassed 2019 levels of business. -
In part, this is explained by the cinema building efforts of Korean multinational firms (CJ-CGV and Lotte) and three local conglomerates (Galaxy, BHD and Cinestar), which have made going to the cinema an aspirational experience that they have extended to smaller cities. Latterly, the multiplex race has been joined by Beta Media, which has further broadened the audience by offering social media-friendly locations and tickets at lower price points.
But Vietnam’s filmmakers are also doing their part. The number of local films released climbed from 41 in 2024 to 50 last year and film genres may be broadening (as horror weakens).
In 2025 record breaker Red Rain (VND714 billion, EUR23.4 million) was a patriotic war drama that benefitted from a dollop of state support. The Four Rascals (VND332 billion, EUR10.9 million) is a romantic comedy. And Detective Kien: The Headless Horror (VND225 billion, EUR7.36 million) is a period horror thriller. The previous all-time top title, 2024’s Mai is a romantic drama.
Contrarians point out that Vietnamese cinema admissions are still low, at around 0.7 visits per year per head of population, and that there remains a high degree of seasonality. They also note that only a small number of directors and stars have real pulling power – as director, the comedian Tran Thanh accounts for four of the top six films, while Ly Hai has his name on the credits of three – suggesting that the industry could still do more to nurture new screenwriting and directing talent.
But Vietnamese films have matured sufficiently in quantity and quality to dominate their domestic market, easing aside both the Hollywood movies that previously dominated and the Korean imports that have occasionally punctured the market. A 40% market share in 2024, rising to 62% in 2025 is likely the envy of other local industries in the region including Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
- Along with Vietnam, Indonesia is the other large Asian market that industry observers have been watching in expectation for many, many years. It has a large, young population, a developing economy and has historically been underserved in terms of cinema infrastructure, for which the country’s dispersed geography can only partly be blamed. -
After a Covid-dip, Indonesia has now returned to growth trend, with the overall market expanding modestly in 2025 and local titles enjoying a 65% market share.
Indonesian film output continues to be dominated by the horror genre, but the biggest hits of last year were a comedy sequel Agak Laen 2 and Jumbo, a local animation in the family drama vein that was backed by Visinema, one of the largest local studios.
Indeed, Visinema prides itself on being somewhat countercyclical and last year put out family film Keluarga Cemara and the heist thriller Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash. “Indonesian audiences are hungry for something fresh,” says its principal Angga Dwimas Sasongko.
He argues that innovative films can energize national pride, turning communities into promotional engines. In the case of Jumbo, people were intrigued to see if local animation really could be up to scratch and, having discovered that the film was both technically irreproachable, as well as emotional and locally resonant (a major theme is bullying), word of mouth became a powerful motivator.
- Last year in Japan Kokuho, the beautifully-detailed kabuki drama whose title appropriately translates as ‘national treasure’, smashed records for a live-action film with JPY20.6 billion (EUR112 million), overshadowing an impressive JPY5.1 billion (EUR27.7 million) from (game-to-film) thriller Exit 8.
Those happened in a year when the country’s anime franchises again performed strongly. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle – Part 1: Akaza Returns earned JPY40.0 (EUR217 million); Detective Conan: One-Eyed Flashback earned JPY14.7 billion (EUR80 million) and Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc collected JPY10.8 billion (EUR58.7 million).
- After a nightmarish decline that caused questions to be raised at the top of government and which had threatened to undermine South Korea’s global pop-culture prowess, Korean cinema at last has something to cheer about in 2026 title The King’s Warden. -
The drama film, which explores the isolation of exiled 15th century King Danjong, received modest reviews that praised the acting of Park Ji-hoon and Yoo Hai-jin more than the story-telling. It was initially a slow-burn success but accelerated and has become the third most watched film of all time in Korea and the highest grossing ever (with 15.7 million ticket sales and revenues of US$101 million, at the time of writing). As the first film to pass the 10 million spectator milestone in two years (Exhuma was the last), the film earned a congratulatory message from the President. And, due to its charm and historical settings, Warden has ignited a boom in film-location tourism.
“The connections are not between these films themselves, rather they are all films that speak to all their respective mass audiences”, says Jeffrey Chan, GM at Taiwan’s A Really Good Film Co., which co-produced and is selling Sunshine Women’s Choir, the currently on-release Taiwan comedy drama that released on the last day of 2025 and has now become the highest-grossing Taiwanese film of all time. It has earned NT$741 million (EUR20 million).
Audience tastes across much of Asia have become more local. “Since Covid, people’s tastes in each country have focused toward what’s going on in the country, including local KOLs, stars and actors and the movies that are created to address them”, says Michael Chai, CEO at Cambodia’s Westec Media.
While global streaming platforms such as Netflix and Disney+ are frequently blamed for stealing some of theatrical cinema’s business and driving up film and TV production costs, they have also had positive effects. They have helped break down resistance to foreign-language content by making sub-titling more commonplace and acceptable.
The same global players, along with Asian regional streaming platforms such as Viu (Hong Kong and regional), Vidio (Indonesia), Catchplay (Taiwan and Indonesia), Tving (Korea and regional), UNext (Japan) and iQIYI and Tencent/WeTV (both operational in mainland China and regionally), have all accelerated the near-global trend towards content localisation. Netflix and Disney+ now spend hundreds of billions of Euros per year commissioning and producing series (and films) in East Asia, Australia and India. Their investments are rebooting Taiwan as a significant player in Chinese-language content (partly as a substitute for mainland China, where the western platforms cannot operate), boosted Thailand’s production services industry and helped make Korean drama series and reality TV shows into mainstream fare across the region.
“It is not a coincidence that all these box office records are happening at the same time. Audiences now are quite tired of Hollywood content with sequel after sequel”, says Lim Teck, executive producer of Singapore-based distributor and producer Clover Films.
In parallel with the shift towards local content consumption, Asia’s filmmakers have been able to make better use of digital technology to deliver higher quality films. Nowhere has this been more evident than in animation.
Malaysia’s Papa Zola: The Movie and Ejen Ali: The Movie 1 and 2, Korea’s The King of Kings (which has earned US$83 million [EUR71.6 million] worldwide with most from the US), Indonesia’s Jumbo, and China’s Ne Zha 2 challenged Japanese anime for local and, to a lesser extent, regional success.
Technology is becoming more affordable and VFX and animation production talent is less clustered in North America. “Everybody’s using the same technology to do films that cater to their own culture. Jumbo was made in Indonesia by many people who used to work for Pixar in the US”, says Christopher Chen, head of Reno Studios. His Taiwan-based company was both a major contributor to Ne Zha 2 and coordinator of the film’s other dispersed Asian subcontractors.
“Take Flow from Latvia, that cost US$3 million (EUR2.6 million) and won the animation Oscar, or Memoir of a Snail from Australia. These weren’t fluke events and could be seen again when Godzilla Minus One won the [2024] special effects Oscar for its made-in-Japan VFX.” “Or the Demon Slayer movies from Japan, which are making money everywhere, because they speak more to Gen Z and show that North America has been isolated”, says Chen.
Animation, however, highlights one of the Asian cinema industry’s enduring weaknesses. In contrast to Japan’s border-crossing anime titles, Asian live-action feature films still struggle with travelability.
That is not the case on the small screen, where TV/streaming consumption data shows the competition for eyeballs in many Asian markets is now a three-way tussle with local content enjoying the highest preference, followed by Korean, ahead of English-language shows. But for all the local hits cited in this essay, Godzilla, Exhuma and How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies sadly remain the exceptions that have achieved pan-regional success. Might it be possible to dream that box office could actually be lifted beyond 2019 levels if only Asia’s film gems played more widely in Asian cinema halls?
Patrick Frater