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In 2015, Showbox had a meaningful performance in the Korean film industry. While Korean cinema recorded a negative return rate of -7.4% and the polarization in terms of production budgets and box office performances became serious, Showbox releases were mostly successful, whether big or mid-sized. Out of the 11 films which they distributed last year, six were notable box office successes with more than two million admissions each, including Assassination with 12.71 million viewers. This great performance, which was the second biggest local release in 2015, owes to the long-term perspective and strategy of YOU Jeong-hun, the president of Showbox. It has been eight years since he assumed this position, and he is now getting ready to go global, collaborating with Huayi Brothers in China, Blumhouse Productions and Ivanhoe Pictures in the US.

Last year, Showbox films posted strong results. This year you are going to release your first international co-production in China. How would you evaluate last year’s performance and how does this year look?

Showbox's performance last year was the best since it was established. However, I believe it means more than just the numbers. Some may say we were just lucky, but to tell you the truth, it is the result of our ongoing efforts that have been made as a result of a strategic change we made 4-5 years ago. Rather than just picking up existing scenarios and financing them, we have participated in the films from the planning phase. This change led to last year's fruit. If I am to foresee what 2016 is going to be like, the box office performance itself may not be as good as last year. However, we are planning a few new attempts that are much more important than just the numbers. We are testing new genres with young directors LEE Il-hyung (A Violent Prosecutor, 2016) and UM Tae-hwa (INGtoogi: The Battle of Internet Trolls, 2013). They may not be 10-million-admission movies, but for these films, two million or three million admissions would be meaningful, too.

Why would you consider the long-term growth potential more important than the short-term sales?

When you are running a company, you always worry about two things: growth and profit. Growth counts mostly on sales, and profit relies on stability. However, the Korean film market is problematic in both fields. We have made many films, but the profit rate has declined. So I asked myself, should I have 20 million viewers with 12 films or with 10 films? During the structural reform, I cut down the line-up by 50%, aiming to put all our resources in a movie once selecting it. However, that was not enough. So for the sake of quantitative growth, we started to look at China. Collaborating with Hollywood is yet another kind of experiment. Today's Korean cinema is going toward extreme commercialism, tapping on either tear-jerking drama or patriotism. I’ve doubted how much longer these films would be successful, and I certainly have not wanted to move with that flow. I thought that one must keep challenging with new genres and come up with new stories, even though success is not guaranteed, or Korean cinema would soon run into a dead end. Production know-how for horror flicks has become particularly shallow as they have disappeared from the market. That’s why I thought I’d work with Blumhouse. The company, which is famous as the producer of the Paranormal Activity series and Whiplash, is especially good at the horror and thriller genres. There are ways in which genre movies make a profit. With their help, why don't I put Korean cinema into an incubator? So it is a collaboration for the diversity in Korean cinema. We should grow outward, become more productive and stable inside, with help from the outside. That is the long-term strategy of Showbox.

Basically, Showbox picks the main ideas. Then we will get help from Blumhouse when we are adjusting them commercially, adding salient selling points. Currently we are discussing one film. Working together, I sometimes get to re-evaluate old scenarios that I once put off, you know, those ones that I thought had little commercial possibility.

Since you have reduced your year-round line-up to 10 or so, I guess you now have more strict criteria for picking them.

In fact, every company has sets of criteria that are quite similar. It is just the matter of whether to stick to them or not. Judging only from the production cost, casting possibility and so on, we make the basic decision of whether or not a film can reach a 40-50% profit rate. What makes our films different is that we prefer genre films with well-balanced stories. That is my preference, but at the same time, other staff’s preference, too. We end up choosing strong, heavy and energetic movies, for example, Hwayi: A Monster Boy (2013) by JANG Joon-hwan or The Yellow Sea (2010) by NA Hong-jin.

What will be the most Showbox-like film among this year’s line-up?

We only choose Showbox-like films in the first place, so I am unable to omit anything. (laughs) Familyhood is a humanitarian comedy featuring KIM Hye-soo; while Key of Life by LEE Gae-byok is a black comedy; KIM Seong-hun’s The Tunnel is a disaster movie, with a totally new approach. It is a really new film. WON Shin-yun’s A Murderer's Guide to Memorization is based on a bestselling novel, showing a new approach to Alzheimer’s. UM Tae-hwa’s Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned is a fantasy, which is a rare genre in Korea.

We began supporting the Mystery Contest to plan and develop horror and thriller movies that we are working on with Blumhouse. It is very important to get hold of intellectual property. However, owning IPs does not mean producing them into films ourselves. We are an investor-distributor. The ideal way of producing a film, for us, is ‘match-making’. A film needs a director, writer, actors and a distributor, all of them. But it is hard to make the best combination. How come the directing turned out this way, while the scenario is so good? The subject matter looks good, but what happened to the final story? Why such an irrelevant cast for such a great story? All these are failures of combination. Within this match-making, the most important is the director, so we sign a few production deals with each director. Supporting a contest goes one step further, by attempting match-making at a very early stage, like at the planning phase. It does not mean being part of its actual production. In other words, it is more like the Hollywood studio system.

You are co-producing Beautiful Accident with China to be released this summer.

 

It is a fantasy and a humanitarian drama, featuring GWEI Lun Mei and CHEN Kun, popular Chinese actors. It tells a story of the value of life, where a success-oriented person gets to learn the true value of life thanks to the events that this person happens to go through. GWEI’s dramatic change in acting should be especially interesting.

 

Recently in the Chinese box office, fantasy romance films like Stephen Chow's The Mermaid are doing well. Beautiful Accident may belong to the same group as well. What do you think could be the next popular genre that will follow after fantasy romance?

 

When I first started working with China, I thought there would be films that would only work in China. However, looking through the Chinese box office hits, I learned they are pretty much the same in Korea. If they find a film interesting, we do too, and if we find a film interesting, they do too. For example, Monster Hunt was really new and interesting. I thought that the producer knows how to do business. Of course you have to have a new selling point. Thriller movies with well-balanced stories are among our specialties, which I believe will work in China as well. So I now think this way: what are the films that would do well in Korea, but do even better in China? I am selecting films under this frame of thinking. I am thinking of thriller, mystery, male-driven films and action.