Digital entertainment company, Pocket Aces’ long-form studio, Dice Media joined hands with one of South Korea’s biggest production houses – JTBC Studios. A Pioneer of the K-drama content industry, JTBC Studios is Korea’s first “all-in-one” studio that encompasses all value chains in the content business by discovering the source IP, producing excellent content, and distributing it worldwide.
The ever-growing fandom for K-dramas makes this collaboration very exciting, and given Dice Media’s expertise in the relationship and family drama genres, they are the perfect partner to remake these shows, starting with the award-winning series ‘Something In The Rain’. The adaptation by Dice Media will be co-produced by JTBC Studios, making this their entry project in India.
Originally broadcasted through JTBC’s Television network in 2018, ‘Something In The Rain’ has won hearts worldwide along with being awarded ‘Excellence in Korean Drama’ at Seoul International Drama Awards in 2018 and ‘Best Drama Series’ at Asian Television Awards in 2019. The story is a bold yet heart-warming narrative around issues that plague both Korean and Indian cultures, seen from the lens of a girl in her mid-30s and a boy in his mid-20s who try to make their taboo relationship work amongst the backdrop of conservative families, workplace harassment, and socio-economic differences.
Indian audiences are becoming adept at consuming content from regions that are not native to them – whether it is content from regions across India or from countries such as Korea or Turkey. Out of these, Korean content is the clear leader with shows like ‘Squid Games’, ‘Descendants Of The Sun’, ‘Itaewon Class’, ‘Crash Landing On You’, etc being widely appreciated by Indian audiences, With the viewing for K-dramas on Netflix in India increasing more than 370% in 2020 over 2019 according to a Netflix report. However, this is mostly an urban center phenomenon since less exposed audiences in smaller towns are often not adept at reading subtitles at the required speed, and also find it harder to relate to faces that don’t look like them. A remake is an effective way to further increase the reach and adoption of these stories by Indianizing the characters and plot points, thus making them more relatable and accessible to audiences pan India. An example is the Sushmita Sen starrer Arya, which is a remake of the Dutch show Penoza. The Indian version moved the story to Rajasthan, giving it a genuine Indian touch.
Jung Kyung-Moon, CEO of JTBC Studios says, “We are excited to present our successful TV series ‘Something In The Rain’ to Indian audiences through a remake. We expect this collaboration to bring a significant opportunity for JTBC Studios to make the first step into the dynamic Indian content market. We also hope that Pocket Aces’ production expertise will be able to make an excellent result, with JTBC Studios’ proven IP. We believe the partnership between JTBC Studios and Pocket Aces will deliver a wonderful experience to the Indian audience.”
Commenting on this partnership, Aditi Shriastava, Co-founder & CEO, Pocket Aces says, “The key for a successful remake is maintaining the soul of the story and characters while localizing plot points and motivations. Korea and India have very similar hearts – the societal and familial structures are quite alike. This makes the content ripe for adaptation. We look forward to working with the JTBC Studios team and are extremely excited to co-produce their highly successful shows here in India. What we share in common is that both JTBC Studios and Pocket Aces truly care about the creatives and about localizing the content in the right manner. With our expertise in relationship/family/workplace dramas and our methodology of using audience insights for development, I am confident that we will be able to do this effectively. Something In The Rain is my personal favorite K-drama, and I look forward to making it one of India’s most sought-after franchises.”
Dice Media is bringing other proven IPs to India including the remake of an Emmy-award-winning US show and a French show. They are also working on adapting a few successful books. Proven IPs typically have faster development times, attract high-quality talent who love the original content, and also give performance comfort to OTT platforms, thus making them extremely attractive to all stakeholders involved.
