▶ The Korea-Japan production relationship  will continue to take hold as the two markets look at each other and realise that – despite the mismatch in operating styles – they may be stronger together. Among the latest titles in this bucket are Merry Berry Love, announced mid-November 2025 and scheduled for a 2026 release. The cross-cultural romantic comedy series brings Japan’s Nippon TV and Korea’s CJ ENM together for the first time. This collaboration sits within a broader push by Japanese media conglomerates to accelerate global expansion. This includes Japan’s export powerhouse – anime. In November, the Association of Japanese Animations highlighted its contribution to a content industry sector, and set bold growth targets: ¥20 trillion/US$129.4 billion by 2033 from ¥4.7 trillion/US$30.4 billion today. The poster alliance in the animated space at the TIFFCOM market in November was Yomiuri TV’s co-production, Pino & Shinoby, with Italy’s Studio Bozzetto; the series premieres in 2026. 

▶ The microdrama conversation will evolve from 2025’s shockwave into a concerted effort in 2026 to close the gap between financial projections and reality. Ultimately (maybe not in 2026 but certainly in the next few years), we will stop thinking that the power of high-cheeze theatrics will fix all industry ills, we will cease fixating on the ridiculous titles, and we will get beyond the pretence that microdrama invented the cliffhanger. Meanwhile, creators everywhere are giving this version of vertical video storytelling a go, giving rise to new slates in every country. Our forecast is that the genre will settle into its place in the broader entertainment ecosystem, filling snippets of consumer time, offering talent another working option, advertisers another way to sell, and platforms another service to boost value. How much will consumers in Asia – and particularly in Southeast/South Asia – pay? An age-old challenge. No cliffhanger there.   

▶ Japanese public broadcaster, NHK, is also stepping beyond previously held drama production boundaries, closing 2025 in post-production on its first scripted collaboration with Singapore, which is also on an international expansion mission. The drama Lost and Found – filmed in Tokyo and Singapore – is scheduled to air on NHK and on Mediacorp in March 2026 as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Singapore’s Shawn Thia and Japan’s Anna Yamada star in the six-episode series about an introverted Singaporean gamer whose world is upended when his online girlfriend disappears and, in his quest to find her, becomes embroiled in Tokyo’s web of scams, trafficking and illegal workers. Collaboration partners include Empire of Arkadia (EOA), which is handling global distribution with KC Global Media, production house TV Man Union (TVU) and Mocha Chai Laboratories. The series received funding from Singapore’s IMDA international co-production grant. 

▶ The effort to drive a T-Wave modelled on Korea’s K-Wave tops our watchlist for Taiwan in 2026. 
Taiwan has spent the past few years attempting to turn itself into a magnet for international co-production, using a mix of government funding, public-private partnerships, a sprawling and massively popular annual pitching event in Taipei, and a merry dance across high-brand-value international film and television events around the world. 
The issue in 2026 is not about willpower, of which the country has an abundance, or commitment to culture (abundance x 2, including cultural content being designated as a national strategic industry). It’s more about the ability to shapeshift into a creative industry that blends commercial reality with the country’s characteristic arthouse soul; and whether filmmakers are able to turn a slew of announcements about “international” projects into entertainment that actually finds this much sought-after but largely elusive audience.
The six-year-old Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA), now under the newly appointed Sue Wang as chair and Erica Wang as CEO, is the island’s dealmaker-in-chief, providing investment, matchmaking and market access that seems to be removing much of the friction traditionally associated with cross-border collaboration. 
The most visible regional partners as 2025 draws to a close are Korea’s CJ ENM, which is part of the NT$960-million/US$29.5 million Taiwan-Korea Entertainment and Cultural Content Fund created with TAICCA, Far Eastone (FET) and TVBS (the breakdown of financial contributions has not been disclosed); and Singapore’s Mediacorp (working with GrayScale and others). Telco FET, already an active investor in content with legs, has an additional fund to support international projects. Taiwan’s newly established Joint Journey Creative (JJC) went live in November with a slew of partners, including Japan and Korea. Japan’s K2 Pictures and gaming company Lunta Ventures both signed MoUs with Taiwan that are supposed to – if they happen – support international expansion.

▶ The results of CJ ENM’s end-2025 latest efforts to expand streaming platform TVing’s footprint beyond its domestic market will become clear in 2026. So too will the outcome emerge of the domestic Korea cut-price TVing/Wavve/Disney+ subscription bundles announced mid-November.  
Much hope lies in CJ ENM’s multi-year deal with Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) for a branded hub on HBO Max across Asia Pacific in 2026. The WBD arrangment also promises original Korean drama co-production for global distribution; no details yet. The new partnership kicked off on 6 November with the premiere of the Studio Dragon drama, Dear X, on TVing and on HBO Max.
 In a second expansion deal, TVing boarded Disney+ in Japan, where WBD has no footprint outside of its mega-licensing deal with market leader U-Next. Disney+ billed the content collaboration as a “major milestone in cross-border entertainment”. The Japan deal kicked off on 5 November with select TVing titles and will “over time” involve up to 60 TVing and CJ ENM shows, including Dear X. 
At home, the results of TVing’s alliance with would-be streaming rival Wavve were already becoming clear in the third quarter of 2025, when CJ ENM reported combined monthy users of 10 million and a 75% bump in ad revenues compared to Q3 2024.  
Netflix, meanwhile, remains Japan’s streaming market leader, with 8.2 million subs and 47% of premium VOD viewership, according to Media Partners Asia (MPA).   

▶ Thailand’s biggest disappointment is the effective collapse of THACCA (the Thailand Creative Content Agency announced in early 2024) – a government-backed construct that could, perhaps, have been constructive although there were critics... The idea was to create a united agency in the vein of Korea’s KOCCA (still seen as the gold standard of industry bodies) and Taiwan’s TAICCA. Except it never really got off the ground before it imploded this year as part of a larger political unheaval, leaving a hole where high hopes had been. What happens next? Who knows. Definitely an issue on our radar for 2026. 

▶ If THACCA was DOA, Thailand remains among Asia’s top filming destinations going into 2026, with a cash rebate of up to 30% for foreign film productions with minimum local expenditures of THB50 million/approx US$1.5 million. The rebate amount depends on activities, including post-production and for productions promoting tourism and “soft power”. According to the Thai Film Office, 395 productions, with a total budget of THB4,199.39 million/US$130 million, filmed in Thailand from January to September 2025. 46 of these were from India, followed by China (42 productions), Korea (40 productions), Japan (36) and the U.S. (33). The U.S. spent the most at (THB 1,667.35 million/US$51.5 million), followed by China (THB 311.57 million/US$10 million), Germany (THB 293.21 million/US$9 million), Hong Kong (THB 273.46 million/US$8.44 million) and France (THB268.20 million/US$8.26 million).  

▶ Japan’s understated approach to premium production and Türkiye’s high-drama preferences may seem to be bedfellows from hell, but... successes like Nippon TV’s Mother continue to energise others and conversations closing 2025 and going into 2026 are nothing if not lively. Adaptations of manga are now on the table for Türkiye, along with unscripted IP and feature films.  
Key questions like, “how do you turn a 10 or 11 episode one-hour series into an 80-episode x 90 mins Turkish drama” continue to be asked, and with some effort, answered. To even be considered for international sales, a Turkish drama needs to have at least 26 episodes, HECE Medya’s Ceren Ergenekon told a packed session in Tokyo in November during the TIFFCOM market.   
But, at the very least, producers are showing up with eyes and ears open, listening intently to opinions on the opportunities... and some brutal truths. “In the 2024/2025 season, 44 new TV series premiered and 28 of them were cancelled,” Ergenekon said. The estimated budget for the season’s total 880 episodes was US$332 million.  
Top-rated Turkish dramas from the past 12 years include remakes of Lebanese series Al Hayba, along with remakes of Korean shows Doctor Cha and Good Doctor. “Remakes are very popular in Türkiye,” she said. The country produces 3-5 remakes a year. 
Speaking about the adaptation of Nippon TV’s Mother, she said: “The lead character was a cold, distant woman, which doesn’t resonate with Turkish audiences. And there is no love story. A Turkish drama has to have a love story – if there’s no love story, you have to add one. And the leads were running away together for half of the series. How long can they run away for? So the remake had a challenge. 
“But the story has one question that we could not get out of our minds: Who is the real mother? The one who gives birth or the one who raise as the child? It’s such a universal, deeply human question, and that’s why we went all in”. The Turkish remake has now been sold to about 40 territories. “Since then, many Japanese dramas have found life in Türkiye”. 

▶ In Singapore, national media platform Mediacorp expands its domestic subscription video slate, adding StarHub’s TV channels/video subscription and advertising to its meWatch online platform. From where we sit, it looks like StarHub could not be happier as it opens the possibility of shedding a segment that it just can’t or doesn’t want to do in favour of the bits (broadband, mobile, enterprise, cybersecurity, etc) that it can. From mid-November, Singapore consumers have been able to buy StarHub packages through meWatch from S$9.98/US$7.70 a month for the small six-channel packs to S$30.56/US$23.50 a month for a choice of entertainment packs, including Entertainment+ pack (25 channels, incl. Animax, AXN, History, HITS, HITS Movies and about six news channels). The Premier League sports pack lands at S$40.74/US$31 a month. In a move that will surprise absolutely no one, both companies have killed off the universally despised contract model and the clunky set-top box. StarHub has been shedding video subscribers for years; its entertainment subs are now around 300,000 or less. meWatch numbers are not public. 

▶ Top of our 2026 radar? Our (hopefully trademark) honest look at the industry’s mood — and some very real panic. Questions being asked: Should people who have, more or less, made a living in video entertainment in the past stick out this crisis in the hope of some sort of recovery? Or should they, in the words of one writer on a lively if brutal LinkedIn discussion group, forget about it and “go to dental school”. Or figure out what the “creator economy” means other than a rebrand of influencer marketing, which really counts as advertising. Or a career in microdrama (maybe, if the money didn’t suck). Film industry analysts talk about a glut of projects looking for the light of day at the endless merry-go-round of markets. The theatrical business in key markets is desperate. Serialised content commissioners and executive producers talk about their search for new and different ideas; “I have money, I just don’t have enough ideas that will work for us,” one told ContentAsia. AI is being called a bubble, with stretched equity valuations and the likelihood of a “sharp correction” and spill-over effects into the real economy; the debate continues to rage between economists. Meanwhile, fear and loathing notwithstanding, creators are up to their eyeballs in AI tools and experimentation, and taking to YouTube with, among other things, a flood of video podcasts. Options for broadcasters, distributors, creators and everyone in between are endless – and compelling for the apparent removal of traditional gatekeepers and curators. Is this what audiences want? Clearly YouTube thinks so; YouTube premium costs more than Netflix (reference: Singapore – YouTube Premium individual membership = S$17.98/US$13.80, Netflix basic = S$15.98/US$12). To us, that’s telling. 

▶ Maximalist drama has dogged this year’s Miss Universe Pageant in Thailand. But the tears, trauma, arguments over whether the pageant’s national director for Thailand, Nawat Itsaragrisil, called Miss Mexico “damaged” or “dumbhead” pale against the corporate drama playing out. As this magazine went to print, the Thai office of accounting behemoth Grant Thornton is trawling through the books of Miss Universe Organisation (MUO) majority owner – the Bangkok-based JKN Global Group. 
Grant Thornton’s entry into the fray follows two years of high excitement, including promises made and broken, stock exchange earnings filings (and other) deadlines set and missed, payment schedules that some investors seemed to accept until they didn’t, secretly taped and leaked videos, fluid alliances and fractious meetings with flip-flop results within hours, constantly renewed stock trading bans and threats of criminal action...     
The drama kicked off in 2023 – less than a year after IMG’s October 2022 sale of the Miss Universe Organisation to the flamboyant transgender businesswoman and one-time media mogul, Anne Jakrajutatip. The total price tag: US$20 million – US$14 million for the acquisition of the entity and the other US$6 million for licence/rights agreements. 
Signs that JKN would miss its first bond payment deadline emerged in Aug 2023. JKN Global filed for bankruptcy protection in November 2023. Almost exactly two years later, at the end of October 2025, Thai authorities, after some back and forth, put Grant Thornton in charge. 
The question in 2026 is what they will find as they comb through accounts, likely going back to before the company started defaulting on its multimillion-dollar loans.  
Although she fought tooth and nail to hold onto the business she built from scratch, Jakrajutatip was pushed out as CEO of JKN in June 2025, accused by Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission of falsifying financials. 
This followed a yo-yo series of events in which Jakrajutatip at one point succeeded in persuading the court to appoint JKN, under her leadership, to head the creation of a business rehabilitation plan acceptable to shareholders.   
On October 29, less than a month before this year’s 74th annual pageant in Thailand, Jakrajutatip was replaced as CEO of MUO. This despite categorical denials only a few months before of rumours that a change was in the works. At the time, the organisation called speculation of her ouster entirely false. “We categorically deny any reports suggesting a change in leadership within the organisation,” MUO said in its official statement in June, adding: “There have been no modifications to our executive structure”. 
By the end of October, Mario Búcaro – MUO’s VP for international relations since January 2024 and former Guatemalan diplomat – had taken over as CEO. Mexican businessman Raúl Rocha, who owns a substantial share in the organisation, continues to serve as MUO’s president. Rocha agreed to pay US$16 million for a 50% stake in MUO in a sale announced in January 2024. JKN claims the purchase was agreed in October 2023, before its rehabilitation filing in Thailand. The timeline is critical to deflect scrutiny (and raised eyebrows) over whether JKN was actually allowed to enter into such agreements. 
Faded into the background by now is the animosity between Jakrajutatip and the beauty pageant’s former president, Paula Shugart, dating back to 2023. Shugart, who resigned in November 2023 after 25 years with the organisation, said at the time that she was breaking her silence because of the “recent false and outrageous comments” made by Jakrajutatip. Shugart called the assertions “dangerous and reckless” and said they “degrade the Miss Universe brand and its titleholders”. By February 2024, the pair were locked in a public catfight involving suggestions of corruption and under-the-table dealing, allegations of defamation, and threats of legal action. 
Against this backdrop, beauty queens took to the stage in Bangkok at 8am local time on 21 November for the finale. The ceremony was broadcast live around the world. Jakrajutatip must have been watching. From where, very few know.

▶ Published in ContentAsia's December 2025 magazine