CJ ENM Billion-dollar purchase of Endeavor Content comes after Skydance investment and its Best Picture win for ”Parasite“
Lee Byungchul’s grand-daughter is already part of a South Korean media empire with her brother Lee Jayhyun. Lee will be a truly extraordinary leader with this new deal. “modern content creator”Lee spoke out about her ambition to be a North American astronaut.
It is part of a wave Korean investment in Hollywood. That deal comes on the heels of a similar one between CAA and Korean studio JTBC, in which JTBC acquired a majority stake in Wiip, the company behind HBO’s Emmy-winning “Mare of Easttown.” In January, social storytelling platform Wattpad was acquired by Webtoon’s Korean parent company Naver for $600 million. And a subsidiary of South Korean entertainment company HYBE acquired Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings for $1.05 billion in April.
CJ has access to top Hollywood talent through Endeavor Content and the ability to package titles better.
“CJ has been active in investing in the US before. They have made other significant investments in entertainment properties. I just think it’s completely unrelated,”Sky Moore, a partner in the law firm Greenberg-Glusker, said this. “They’ve got money and they want to invest in mainstream entertainment content; they can obviously use it in Korea.”
While the deal does not include distribution, CJ retains more flexibility to release its projects through traditional studios or streamers — at a moment when many are finding great success with foreign-produced content like the French streaming hit “Lupin,”Spanish-language “Money Heist”South Korean phenomenon of the non-CJ ENM South Korea “Squid Game.”
What’s more, CJ Entertainment and Merchandising is now gaining a foothold in Hollywood just as streamers like Netflix and Apple TV+, among others, are looking to make bigger plays in South Korea. Lee is a potential bridge to help these companies get the introductions they need and find international talent. “It’s startling how many things she’s in the middle of,”According to an insider. “When it comes to Asia in particular, she knows everyone…she’s a player.”
Who is Miky Lee? The 63-year-old heiress to the Samsung fortune — whose name is pronounced Mickey and derived from her Korean name, Mie Kyung — has been a driving force in expanding her family’s sugar and flour manufacturing division, CJ Group, into the entertainment space, First in 1996, with a 11% investmentDreamWorks SKG: $300 million
“Since DreamWorks, she has established really longstanding Hollywood relationships with people,”A CJ insider spoke of Lee.
Shortly after director Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” became the first foreign-language film to win the Oscar for Best Picture, CJ ENM was part of a $275 million investment in David Ellison’s Skydance.
Additional to “Parasite,” CJ Entertainment financed some of Bong’s other films, such as “Snowpiercer,” “Mother”And “Memories of Murder.”Samuel Goldwyn Films released the indie romance recently by the company. “Endings, Beginnings.” And it’s developing English-language remakes of Korean and Vietnamese films, such as “Save the Green Planet”Ari Aster is the producer “The Housemaid”Deon Taylor, director of Universal and two projects currently in development with Kevin Hart. “Extreme Job”And “Bye, Bye, Bye.”
CJ has the opportunity to access a vast library of film and TV content through Endeavor Content’s acquisition. The studio has owned, funded and/or sold over 125 series and movies, including a portion of a show like “Seasons with Marilyn”. “Killing Eve”The movies “Just Mercy”And “In the Heights,”It will use the funds to launch its streaming service TVING worldwide. After a successful launch in Korea, the OTT platform was launched globally in 2010. Major investment by a South Korean tech conglomerate Naver, JuneNielsen Koreanclick, an analytics firm, reported that TVING had 3.4million subscribers. However, the company hasn’t confirmed this number but stated they were hoping to reach eight millions by 2023.
According to the CJ insider, CJ has been seeking to acquire a content studio for some time — and Endeavor was motivated to sell 80% of its agency WME’s production company after reaching a settlement earlier this year with the Writers Guild of America to avoid conflicts of interest in its representation of writers and other talent. (The agency also agreed that it would phase out lucrative packaging agreements for film and television projects.
CJ has always prioritized English-language remakes of its films with other partners. However, an insider stated that Endeavor Content’s deal will allow CJ to expand beyond Korean remakes to more international IP. The deal will see Chris Rice and Graham Taylor continue to be co-CEOs at Endeavor Content.
“From our side of the world, we represent a unique voice, and we’d love to marry that with a U.S. content studio that has a global mindset,”Insiders spoke of the 2017-founded content studio that employs about 200 people. “The impressive part of Endeavor is that for its short tenure and relatively small size, it doesn’t just do big star-driven U.S. productions. It has significant global partnerships as well. We’re very aligned at looking at entertainment as a global marketplace, and needing to create with the best creators in Hollywood and Asia. We really think that creates a formidable opportunity.”
That’s just in North America, though. CJ has produced numerous films since 1995. It is the only Korean film distribution and investment company to distribute its films internationally. CJ owns 16 cable TVNetworks in South Korea: tvN behind hits such as “Melancholia,” “Chimera”And the reality cooking series “Three Meals a Day.”CJ Media subsidiary Studio Dragon signed a three-year agreement with Netflix for content production and distribution in 2020.
You can also become a major K-Pop artist. Lee is the one to know. CJ’s KCON music festival for K-Pop artists produced superstars BTS’ second-ever U.S. show in 2014. CJ ENM announced last month that it was in discussions to acquire SM Entertainment. SM Entertainment is the pioneering musicthat helped create K-Pop. Korea Herald Report.)
In fact, CJ ENM’s entertainment sector is actually driving more of the conglomerate’s overall revenue than its consumer products division. According to the company’s earnings report for the third quarter, revenue from CJ’s entertainment sector was up 19% (year over year) with 541.7 billion Korean won. That’s helped it grow its overall revenue 7% (857.5 billion won, or $722 million), while its other segment was actually down 8%. Entertainment revenue has grown from 56% of the company’s overall earnings a year ago to 64%.
CJ Group was founded in the early 1950s by Lee’s grandfather, and for years, the company expanded its footprint in ways that had nothing to do with media or entertainment, starting merely as a sugar manufacturer. But many in Hollywood have acknowledged that since then, the heights that DreamWorks or Bong as a filmmaker have reached may not have been possible without Lee’s initial contribution.
When “Parasite”The award for Best Picture was won by the Evening close to closingLee was not allowed to speak. Although the microphone was already on the stage, you could see Tom Hanks leading the chant for Lee to speak (when she praised Bong and all Korean filmgoers). They speak well of the direction that Lee and CJ ENM are heading. “Up, Up, Up!”
