Banijay Asia is doubling down on Southeast Asia expansion with new deals locked in Indonesia and the enhancement of a reality show that will send contestants to space, founder and Group CEO Deepak Dhar revealed at the APOS conference.
Speaking on a panel titled “Culture to Content: How Asia’s Creative Ecosystem Is Going Global,” Dhar announced the company has “already locked a couple of deals in Jakarta” for both scripted and unscripted titles. The expansion includes Banijay Asia’s previously announced cross-border reality series about “finding one Indian and finding one Indonesian who we can send to space in a Blue Origin rocket.” The series was previously focused on finding just one Indian.
The expansion comes as Banijay Asia scales its massive Indian operations, where the company produces “800 days of ‘Big Boss’ [the local version of ‘Big Brother’] in our calendar year of 365 days,” demonstrating the market’s voracious content appetite.
“The timing is right for us personally, because we’re happy in the position that we are at in India, and now we can focus our bandwidth into the rest of the region,” Dhar said. “We are really doubling down on Indonesia and then subsequently in Thailand.”
Banijay Asia has successfully localized international formats while developing Indian originals. The company’s “Night Manager” adaptation for the erstwhile Disney+ Hotstar delivered massive numbers, and they’re currently working on Season 2. The company also recently rebooted legacy crime procedural “CID,” which ran for 18 years, giving it “massive strong results on Sony television” before windowing it to Netflix.
Disalada “Stang” Disayanon, head of content at Thailand’s Kantana Group, pointed to the company’s Netflix original “Master of the House” as proof that authentic local stories can travel worldwide. The series reached the top 10 in over 63 countries within its first week.
“When we choose what content to do, we really have to pick local, authentic Thai stories,” Disayanon said. “In the case of ‘Master of the House,’ we centered around the dynamic of domestic workers and working in rich families, which is still relevant to Thai culture today. We wanted to dramatize that, and on top of that, we layer in universal themes such as power struggle, inequality and family relationships.”
The company has also expanded into horror with “Watcher,” based on its own IP, which sold to 20 countries theatrically and will be licensed globally on a streaming platform. Kantana is currently developing a show mixing Muay Thai with a zombie apocalypse in Bangkok, for Netflix.
Nicholas Simon, founder and CEO of Indochina Productions, outlined his company’s evolution from production services to original content creation. Founded 14 years ago, the company has worked across 14 countries and recently completed major international productions including “White Lotus” Season 3 and Sam Raimi’s upcoming film “Send Help.”
All three executives noted increasing global appetite for Asian content, particularly following the success of shows like “Squid Game.”
Dhar summed up the regional ambition: “It’s really time that an Indian story catches the fancy and attention of global audiences as well. So that’s really something that we’re excited and working towards.”