By Yun Suh-young
Korean film importers will unite to step up the fight against “unreasonable” import prices for foreign films, officials said Thursday.
Over a dozen local film importers recently gathered to discuss ways to tackle the issue of the pricing of foreign films by their sales companies.
“We will form an official network to share information between local film importers about foreign film sales companies,” said Jung Sang-jin, CEO of Atnine Film, one of the network’s participating companies.
“The import prices are ridiculously high and are spiraling up. The foreign sales companies have all the information about us, but we Korean film importers didn’t have a network where we could share information about them,” Jung said. “We no longer want to be pushed around by them, so we decided to come up with a strategy to refuse their excessive and outrageous demands."
The network will be tentatively called the Film Importers Network until the alliance is finalized later this year.
When the membership hits 100, the network will officially announce its establishment through a press conference, according to Jung.
“We don’t have a press release yet because we need about six months to prepare and discuss our direction. We plan to meet every month and will continue to accept new members until the membership reaches 100,” Jung said.
The membership will consist of the heads of Korean film importing companies.
“We need top officials in order to exert influence,” Jung said. “As for the members, we are open to not only medium-sized companies but also conglomerates such as CJ E&M. We will invite them to join the network.”
The idea to build the alliance came a few months ago when several importing companies and Jung took the initiative to organize a meeting. Currently, 16 companies have pledged to join including Green Narae Media, Double Enjoy Pictures, Rainbow Factory and Cine Lux.
Competition has become fierce among local film importers due to the expansion of the foreign film import market over the past few years. The number of imported films quadrupled since the early 2000s from around 200 to over 900 last year.
The share of foreign films took up 64 percent of the local film market as of March this year, nearly double the 36 percent share of Korean films.
The problem is that importers are buying foreign films above the asking price.
“When company A wants to sell its film for $100,000 and importer B says it will buy it for that price, then other companies who want to buy the same film end up offering higher prices to win the contract,” Jung said.
“What happens when a movie first debuts in a film market is that new importers don’t get a chance to even meet the sales company because they don’t have any credit. So these importers docilely agree to pay the high price the sellers ask for. If they say yes for $300,000, the price could double to $600,000 for latecomers.”
When importers purchase films which greatly exceed the asking price, they face the risk of a huge deficit if they don’t manage to garner enough viewers.
A case in point is “The Assassin” (2015), a Taiwanese film which was released in February. It managed to attract only 13,000 viewers during the month of its release, which was one-tenth of its breaking-even point.
Because of the scramble for priority acquisition, even independent films that were sold at $10,000 to $50,000 are now being bought at over $100,000.
The importers’ network plans to take strict measures against unreasonable pricing and profiteering of foreign sales companies when the organization is finalized.
"It can be in the form of boycotting certain companies," Jung said. "Japan has a system where they open up the offered import prices so that there can be a social consensus on preventing prices from skyrocketing. We want to follow that model."