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EXCLUSIVE: The newly-installed leaders at Taiwan‘s GrX studio highlighted the firm’s desire to make inroads in the Korean market as well as a strategic shift to focus on English-language titles.
Earlier this month, the studio announced Dennis Wu as Strategy and Chief Investment Officer and Shing-ming Ho as Chief Creative Director. They join the team that is currently headed by CEO Phil Tang and founder Hank Tseng.
GrX is behind Copycat Killer and The Victims’ Game season 2, which was the first Mandarin-language original series renewed by Netflix.
Wu told Deadline that the studio is focused on Asia-Pacific as its main market. GrX already has an office branch in Singapore, a representative in Japan and partners in Beijing to solidify its regional focus.
He also highlighted how GrX is working to develop stronger partnerships in the Korean film industry this year.
One of the studio’s upcoming projects is That Photograph from 1977 (working title), a cross-border romance film between two individuals from Taiwan and South Korea.
“GrX will invite Korean teams, actors and cast, and it will be a good opportunity to enter the Korean market,” said Wu. The film was selected as part of the Chinese-language Golden Horse Film Project Promotion (FPP) in 2022 and is currently in the funding stage. It has already secured finances from domestic content agency TAICCA and Hakka Public Communication Foundation.
Before joining GrX, Wu was Chairman of Bole Film, Chairman of Vieshow Cinemas and Vie Vision Pictures and Marketing Director of 20th Century Fox in Taiwan. He was also executive producer of Marry My Dead Body, which premiered last year and became the seventh highest-grossing Taiwanese feature of all time.
With more than 30 years as a screenwriter under his belt, Shing-ming Ho was the Chairman of Good Story Inc. and also previously served as Director of Sanlih Entertainment Television. He co-wrote the dramas Once and Copycat Killer.
GrX is aiming to produce three to five feature films and series every year. Another key work-in-progress is Juran, the first co-production between Taiwan and New Zealand. GrX said that the first version of the script is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
The series follows a Taiwanese gang as they become implicated in a high-profile theft of a famous Goldie painting from a New Zealand gallery. A detective with a traumatic past, drug dependencies and an affinity for art is then sent from Taipei to assist with the case. Highlighting Austronesian languages in the Pacific Ocean region, the series is supported by TAICCA’s development fund as part of the Creative Content Development Program, as well as a script fund from the New Zealand government.
Tang said: “We benefited a lot from the exchanges with New Zealand producer Fraser Brown and screenwriter Brendan Donovan, and we learned about some of the differences in the film and television production processes between New Zealand and Taiwan. For GrX, this is the first collaboration with New Zealand and we look forward to opening up opportunities in different markets.”
Tang added that the studio’s outlook has become more international after it was rebranded from Greener Grass Production, which previously produced The Tag-Along film franchise as well as drama series Wake Up and Gold Leaf.
“It’s different from when we were an independent production company. We have strategic alliances with other Taiwanese production companies and we are able to more effectively utilize manpower and resources. After being integrated, GrX Studio’s subsidiaries in Taiwan include Tomorrow Together Capital, which invests in projects and content. Our studio creates a production chain for film and television and more effective cross-border platform resource integration.”
Tomorrow Together Capital was also founded by Tseng in 2022, with GrX Company acting as general partner and Eastern Broadcasting and Taiwan Mobile as limited partners. The fund had a target size of $17.4M.
Since 2018, GrX Studio has also run the Wild Grass Project, a story and content pitching competition.
Despite producing several Mandarin-language titles in the past, Tang said the the studio will shift its focus to solely producing English-language works in future. On this strategic shift, Tang said: “Script development using two languages is more time-consuming and labor-intensive than only one language.”
One of the new challenges that the studio’s leaders face is how best to use artificial intelligence (AI) in the production process, without compromising on artistic integrity. Wu said: “AI takes the film industry to a whole new level. It’s a good tool for activities like translating and generating image content, and this saves time in the pre-production stage.
“During production, using AI for more systematic management of the production budget has made the process more simple. By making good use of technology in every production stage, we believe that moving with the times is the best strategy.”
