Mediacorp unveiled three script co-development projects – one Korean and two Chinese – this afternoon, expanding the Singapore national media platform’s cross-border co-creation ambitions and bringing new projects announced during the Singapore Media Festival’s ATF this week to at least 12.  

 The script co-development initiatives are Korean-language title “Orange Boy from the North”, and Chinese-language titles “The Penrose Trap” (回环), and “Voyage Unknown” (玩美邮轮假期). 

The projects are supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). 

Mediacorp said the three projects, involving romance, suspense and drama, represented “a vibrant cross-section of Asian creativity… each showcasing distinctive storytelling voices united by shared themes of identity, discovery, and transformation”.  

“Orange Boy from the North” emerged from Mediacorp’s MoU with Korea’s “Mr. Romance” (creator of  “Moving”) signed in May this year. Written by Shin Yu Dam, (“Marry My Husband”), the teen/coming-of-age drama is about a privileged North Korean boy and a humble South Korean girl who meet in Singapore, where their unlikely relationship blossoms.  

Crime-fantasy thriller “The Penrose Trap” (回环) is by screenwriter and producer Gary Tang 邓特希 (“The File of Justice” 壹號皇庭). The Penrose Trap follows a journalist and a young woman who, a decade after a family tragedy, reopen the unsolved case that once shattered their town. 

The third script co-development, Voyage Unknown, brings together Mediacorp and Lau Kok Rui 刘国瑞, the award-winning writer-director whose feature film “The Sunny Side of the Street” 《白日青春》 earned six Taipei Golden Horse nominations, four Hong Kong Film Award nominations, and won both Best New Director and Best Original Screenplay at the Golden Horse Awards.  

Set aboard a luxury cruise liner, “Voyage Unknown” explores desire, loss and the choices that define us in the story about three generations of a family on board Southeast Asia’s largest cruise, each harbouring their own private mission.