Imagine Entertainment Teams With Taiwan’s TAICA on Content Lab – The Hollywood Reporter

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Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment is extending its reach to Taiwan. The company said Tuesday that it has partnered with TAICCA (Taiwan Creative Content Agency) and Taipei-based studio Sixty Percent Productions to produce Emerge, a new program designed to support Taiwanese writers, directors and producers to develop Chinese-language original TV series.

TAICCA said it initiated Emerge to give Taiwanese creators the opportunity to maximize their talents to meet the challenges of a competitive global market being remade by the surge in demand for premium Asian storytelling on streaming platforms. For its inaugural edition, the program will select five projects to undergo an intensive 20-week development program supervised by Imagine Entertainment and Sixty Percent Productions, with experienced global TV producers, showrunners and executives as guest lecturers. In addition to developing high-quality, production ready content, the program aspires to help the participating talent grow into the role of showrunners.

“We believe that creative collaboration can thrive when we share and learn from each other. It is in that spirit that we are thrilled to partner with TAICCA and Sixty Percent Productions on Emerge,” said Imagine Entertainment executive chairmen Brian Grazer and Ron Howard in a joint statement. “We look forward to working with program participants to help them craft their stories for the local market and globally.”

Imagine and Sixty Percent Productions previously partnered in Taiwan on production of Taiwan Crime Stories, an original Chinese-language true crime series that is currently streaming on Disney+.

On Tuesday, TAICCA began accepting submissions (deadline July 31, 2022) for writers and their Chinese-language original TV projects to join the inaugural session of the Emerge.

“The current state of the international content market has intensified the competition between content produced in every country,” added TAICCA CEO Izero Lee. “Therefore, if Taiwan’s film and television industry can increase its output of high-quality original content, it can increase its chances of successfully tapping into commercial markets. Chinese-language original content has great potential to connect with audiences and subscribers around the world, thus a focus of the industry at this stage is to create high-quality Chinese-language content that resonates with global markets.”

“Foreign-language content isn’t just restricted to local territories anymore,” said Sixty Percent Productions’ co-founder and CCO Cora Yim. “Through Emerge, we will gather the best resources from Asia and Hollywood to inspire and equip young and ambitious Taiwanese creators so that they have the space and time to truly focus on development that will lead to high-quality TV shows.”