Beach House Pictures’ Donovan Chan Finds Positives in a Year of Turmoil in Asian TV Production: ‘If You’re in True Crime, It’s a Good Time to Be Alive’

Donovan Chan, co-chief and creative director of Singapore-based Beach House Pictures has operations that span scripted, unscripted and branded TV as well as film, across the width of the Asia region. That gives him a unique perspective on a trying last year and where the upsides appear to be. He sat down with Variety on the eve of the Asian Television Forum.

It has been a year since you chewed the fat with Variety. How eventful has it been?

Market forces have changed a lot, starting with the streamers. In a single year, they went from boom time to crunch time. Literally, every major international streamer from the U.S. has got into a bit of a situation with financing, debt and overspending. That, combined with advertisers spending less money in certain territories, impacted the streamers and ad-supported platforms, which then impacts the commissioning dollars that comes out to producers. And we’ve realized that this isn’t just a US issue. It’s also impacted big Asian production centers like Korea and China.

It is like a cold, where we felt the sniffles a year ago. But it became exacerbated over the year. And we started implementing plans. What Beach House has always been built on is our co-productions. From the very beginning, we had to get very savvy and become skilled at pulling money together from various parties, other than the usual sources.

In Asia, there have never been huge commissioning budgets. So, in order to do premium, high-concept shows, we had to figure out what is the concept, how can we make it appealing to partners from different areas where they might be willing to put money into a show. Can we pull money in from China and the U.S. to increase the budget?

We were one of the first companies, if not the first company in Singapore, to really create a branded solutions arm to the business, Beach House Labs. And the real focus of Labs is how can we bring financing in together for the branded space and couple that with broadcast, as well as maybe even theatrical. We’re seeing a real uptick in that sort of solutions-based co-production where we’re able to merge worlds that previously don’t work as well together, and certainly don’t work very well in places like the U.K. where OFCOM rules are very strict.

So, in Asia and between Asia and say North America, we’re able to move more efficiently, come up with more diverse and out of the box co-production models. That has really helped us weather this kind of storm in the past year.

I’m starting to feel like the U.S. is very, very slowly getting on its feet. But there’ll be more fiscal responsibility from the streamers and the buyers. Producers have to be cleverer at balancing commission work versus co-production work and branded work.

How much did the twin Hollywood strikes affect your activity?

They had some impact. We announced the series ‘The Ride Life With Sung Kang’ and Sung is a lifetime SAG. We had to be very respectful of his loyalty to SAG and be careful about the rules that SAG was laying out. Like with the pandemic, we had no roadmap, so we had to go with the flow. But, ultimately, we were able to keep the production moving. Partly because it wasn’t a scripted production SAG felt they could approve the project.

We also had scripted projects in development, with WGA writers. So, we had to put a pause on some of these development deals. For upcoming projects without attached writer, we had to get creative and look at writers from other parts of the world.

As an international company from Asia, these things do impact us, but probably not as much as at the American companies.

That said, your year began well.

The ‘Missing: The Lucie Blackman Case’ documentary earlier this year did really well for us. It went to number one in the U.K. and U.S. [on Netflix], which is fantastic for an Asian production.

We are now hearing that there are large backlogs of unsold shows in Korea and Taiwan. Are you experiencing the same thing in Southeast Asia as well?

Those would be risky business models. We don’t take these positions without distribution or platform partnerships. We’ve been very careful about our projections, we have intelligence discussions with reliable distributors, whether they’re global or more Asia based before we make decisions to invest. And we tend to stage our investments between development and production. Sometimes we even pilot internally before we even go out to find a coproduction.

I don’t think that’s as big a deal in Southeast Asia because I don’t think there are as many producers who would make those decisions. Maybe in the scripted space or like maybe feature films, there will be some soft money, strategic sort of discussions happening there. But for TV, you tend to find an anchor broadcaster and then try and work out with a distributor.

Doesn’t being part of a multinational consortium give you advantages?

Definitely. Being part of a bigger group is always useful. Not just for the resources, but being able to tap into distribution relationships quickly.

There are advantages in financing too. Like, if there are projects that we all believe in, and which we need to get across the line. These lend themselves to gap financing or seed financing situations. Some of those conversations we can have internally. So, at Beach House we would access soft money in Singapore or in other countries that we will produce it with. And within the group we’d look at distribution advances, for example, or have a discussion about an investment into a project that’s outside of just distribution advances, because there’s a strong belief that will do well for us. Not everything goes through, mind.

Beach House has an interesting mix of geography. How is the China connection going these days?

We actually are experiencing a huge amount of activity in China. I don’t think the Chinese have stopped wanting to collaborate or to get projects out to the world. I think, there’s been a recalibration because the Chinese aren’t immune to sponsors reducing investment and streamers suffering because of that. So, there are market forces that have impacted how much and how they finance projects. The Chinese are also very keen to see Chinese topics and Chinese talents in those same projects. So, I don’t think that’s changed either.

We’ve seen a lot of interesting movements on development and projects. I think, like the U.S., there’s a slow recovery. There’s a big contingent of Chinese companies coming to ATF. That’s a big show of support for an industry that’s on the mend.

And your Imax theatrical project in China?

For China, that middle ground of you know, let’s do a travel show or let’s do this cheap and cheerful cooking show, that’s gone.

If you’re going to do any project, whether it’s in the U.S. and China, you have to aim really high. Big scale, high profile projects that are worth spending money on, they take longer, but the impact of those projects will be bigger. And I’m not just thinking about celebrities, but new ways to tell Chinese stories. Our Imax film, ‘The Elephant Odyssey,’ we’re getting unique access into Chinese archives and stories, and then supersizing it by packaging it with U.S. talent like Clair Popkin, who was the DOP for ‘Free Solo’ and doing on a theatrical level.

You could say that our strategy for the U.S. matches that in China, where we’re going super premium. And even with those projects that have a branded approach, say where a tourism board wants to do a show, we bring that Netflix level of quality and premium approach. Because the distributors are also finding hard to move some of these types of shows and need things that are going to stand out.

And the streamers, like the FAST channels, are fighting for precious eyeballs, and for people to subscribe. Even the free channels are trying to attract advertisers who want their brands to be associated with premium shows. So, producers have a responsibility to up their game, develop the best ideas and making them at the top at the top level with the best talent.

Is booming Southeast Asia immune to all this doom and gloom?

Southeast Asia has become a real focus, not just for the streamers, but for studios around the world. I wouldn’t say boom time yet, but we’re just beginning a really interesting cycle in Southeast Asia where there’s definitely a lot more interest and money floating around.

But that said, you know, Southeast Asian projects are really just at the beginning of a really interesting evolution where you’re not just making hyper localized content for, say a key market like Indonesia and Thailand. We’re often also thinking the other way around. About how we package those shows so that they will resonate internationally, but also still be true to their roots.

Now, there’s a big difference between Southeast Asian filmmakers like ourselves developing a show, as opposed to U.S. producers coming into the region and making Southeast Asian content. There’s a massive difference because the perspective is different. And the way they would tell the story is different.

That’s why people are interested in finding those producers and filmmakers who will be able to do to exploit that gap in the market.

Southeast Asia is one of the few remaining growth centers for the streamers. And, like any property ladder, this is a neighborhood that you want to get into if you’re looking for more renters.

‘Cleopatra Wong’ represents that sort of approach where you’re taking beloved Southeast Asian IP, and you’re trying to find a home for it on the global stage.

We don’t just see ‘Cleo,’ as a series of films, or a live action series, we’ve always seen it as a franchise, like ‘James Bond.’ We wanted to get ‘Cleo’ out in every shape imaginable, to every fan on different platforms and across the content space. There is room for an Asian female hero that you can be proud of, enjoy watching and be part of that fan base.

What are the new projects we need to know about from Beach House?

Because I’m a co-producer and need clearances, I can’t just softly announce a whole new slate today. We are a major stakeholder in Momo Film and they have announced new projects and feature films. We also have TV series working between Beach House and Momo. Hopefully, there’ll be big announcements in January onwards.

At Beach House, we’re aiming at a mixture of Southeast Asian streaming projects as well as internationally-distributed projects. We’re aiming high and hyper-localized at the same time, left and right channels, not just trying to stick to one.

On the unscripted side, since the success of [Netflix documentary] ‘Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee and Jessica Wongso,’ we’re definitely doubling down on crime in Asia. ‘Ice Cold’ has proven to the world that Asian true crime stories, when told the right way, with the right duty of care to the participants, can rate more highly than some of the scripted fare that the streamers themselves are producing.
If you are a true crime filmmaker in Asia like this is this is a good time to be alive.

You sound like a politician: ‘We’re gonna double down on crime.’

I wish, it was as noble than that.