'House of Cards' producer shares secrets of its success

By Baek Byung-yeul

“House of Cards” producer Joe Hipps underlined the use of universal themes as key to global popularity of TV dramas during a recent visit to Seoul.

“What we learned from the success of ‘House of Cards’ was that there was a universal theme throughout the drama mainly dealing with American politics,” said Hipps, a vice president of American film and drama studio Media Rights Capital which produced the drama. He was participating at a conference with local content creators at the National Museum of Korea in Seoul on Nov. 20.

Organized by five state-run research agencies including the Advanced Center for Korean Studies, the conference was intended to discuss how traditional Korean culture can reach more global audiences in different kinds of formats.

Besides Hipps, many experts in different fields including novelist Song Sok-ze and cartoonist Park Si-baek shared their ideas about how to create fascinating cultural contents inspired by traditional cultural heritages.

“House of Cards,” revolving around the ruthless political tactics of American congressman Frank Underwood (played by Kevin Spacey), has been a smash hit worldwide. For its two seasons, the drama earned 9 and 13 nominations respectively at the Emmy Awards.

It is also regarded as a game changer in TV industry as the drama has been only serviced by Netflix, one of the most popular film and television online streaming companies. With the huge success of the drama, Netflix earned more than $1.3 billion of revenue in this second quarter.

Hipps said that the huge success of “House of Cards” could also be possible by the cooperation of many creators.

Many start directors, including David Fincher, and writers were brought to participate in filming the drama series.

“Fincher only directed first two episodes what we call pilot. He set the tone and look and then other directors followed that. They had their idea and thoughts, of course, but I think it is very important that the first director set the tone and everyone keep that.”

“For writers, we have a head writer Beau Willimon. He wrote the pilot episodes and several other episodes, but he is the head of writers who really makes final decision. On any job, we have a boss and there’s a hierarchy there,” he said.