Make no mistake: CJ ENM is on the move.
The South Korean conglomerate, which has done as much as any company to build the country’s entertainment ecosystem, is actively looking to expand its “production capacity and efficiency”.
That’s the word of Kang Ho Seung, CEO of the film, television and music conglomerate that now shares the CJ ENM logo. Kang gave a rare and intense interview with Variety on August 21 in downtown Los Angeles on the sidelines of CJ ENM’s KCON LA pop culture conference, which brought in nearly 100,000 fans from all over the United States.
Kang Ho Sung, CEO of CJ ENM.
Despite the palpable teen spirit that KCON has brought to two packed concerts at the Crypto.com Arena, Kang describes CJ ENM’s current mission in both humble and ambitious terms.
“Our core business in the bread and butter business is as a content provider. Our biggest goal is to create premium, well-made content and expand it globally,” says Kang.
Since the beginning of 2020, CJ ENM has significantly raised its profile in Hollywood by purchasing a minority stake in Skydance Media from David Ellison and a majority stake in Endeavor Content. It also made a mark in the metaverse with an investment in digital humans supplier Hyperreal.
Late last month, CJ ENM announced the appointment of Steve W. Chung, former CEO of Fox, as the group’s chief growth officer. It is worth noting that he is scheduled to reside in Los Angeles and not in Seoul.
At home, CJ ENM has ditched its previous book, relinquishing direct ownership and control over partnerships that bring in capital, accelerate growth and share risk and reward. In 2020, it separated from its broadcast TV platform and recapitalized its value in an alliance with tech giant Naver and broadcaster and producer JTBC. The TV has since merged with smaller competitor Seezn while maintaining Seezn’s beneficial connections with KT Corp. , formerly known as Korea Telecom.
To increase the production of K content even more, the group launched Studio CJ ENM, a television production group headed by film producer and director JK Yoon. It built the largest virtual production studio in Asia and struck a joint venture deal in Japan for the TV production arm of Studio Dragon.
“Our primary goal is to maximize content production capacity and efficiency,” says Kang. This is expected to help the TV in its quest to overtake Netflix in Korea and become the largest streaming operator in the country. But Kang says there is no plan to stop sales of external software by the group’s many production units: “Our two-pronged approach to content means we won’t limit ourselves. We also want to use external content platforms.”
Studio Dragon is still renegotiating its deal to supply Netflix, and CJ ENM has formed an alliance with Paramount Global. Paramount+ was recently launched in Korea as a component of TV, while CJ ENM shows are also running on Paramount’s FAST Pluto TV service.
Given the efforts to create two-way production flows between Korea and Endeavor content and the current seemingly insatiable demand for K content, Kang sees CJ ENM heading to the level that company founders Jay and Mickey Lee only dreamed of. “Our multiple studio architecture will give us a solid foundation to create more global projects and expand to the global stage,” says Kang.
Over a quarter century in business, CJ ENM had to invent the Korean film industry almost from scratch. It has nurtured mass music in Korea by launching a music television channel (Mnet) and showcasing related awards (MAMAs).
In the past eight years, the group has industrialized the Korean TV production sector by creating Studio Dragon, a pivotal studio with quality control, finance and marketing functions surrounded by an aura of hot shops representing 300 iconic designs. This year, Studio Dragon presents 32 shows for local broadcasters and international broadcasters and expects to increase this number to 50 in 2023.
However, filmmaking remains a major reference point.
The promise we made [when starting in multiplexes] It was a signal to the industry that we were going to build a certain amount of screens, that we were going to make good movies and that we were going to secure the screens. [to distribute them on]. This translated into predictability that allowed [third-party] “Financial companies are starting to invest in the film industry,” says Kang. We also made sure to reinvest the profits of cinemas in the production environment. It was a virtuous circle.”
Kang wasn’t a CJ employee in the group’s early years, but rather a media attorney able to keep a close eye on the transformations.
By 2019, with consistently strong domestic film screenings and enviably high per capita attendance rates, South Korea was the world’s fourth largest box office market – ahead of many of the most populous countries.
Along the way CJ has produced or financed films like “Old Boy,” “Snowpiercer,” and the Oscar-winning “Parasite.” But the impact of COVID on the theatrical industry has halted the momentum that CJ’s film operations might expect in the aftermath of “Parasite.”
Instead, COVID, the Korean Wave, and the arrival of global broadcasting channels in Korea accelerated CJ ENM’s moves into TV, broadcasting and music – and accelerated their push to be a presence in entertainment outside of Asia.
However, since the mid-1990s, the two CJ Entertainment co-founders saw themselves in a global role and began their plans with a minority investment of $500 million in the legendary DreamWorks studio SKG.
It took Lees’ ambition more than two decades to come close to fruition. But its leaders are determined to get the group in shape to seize the opportunity presented by the unprecedented global obsession with contemporary Korean culture.
“The reason we started with DreamWorks was because we wanted to know what global standards were and adopt them,” says Kang.
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