Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

After Squid Game in 2021 and Very Lawyer Yu Yingxi in 2022, Netflix's hottest Korean drama of 2023 has been born. The second installment of "Glory of Darkness" topped Netflix's global ratings list in just three days, and even completely crushed the English-language series of the same period.

Song Huiqiao, the queen of Korean drama, completely subverts the gentle and sweet image of the past, bids farewell to the cliché of romantic love theme, and plays a ruthless revenge goddess after being humiliated. This dark thriller Korean drama not only made Song Huiqiao achieve acting breakthrough after divorce, but also made Netflix's Korean drama maker produce another world-famous work.

Another Oscar winner: Everything Everywhere All at Once was undoubtedly the biggest winner at the 95th Academy Awards this year. This Chinese-American film, directed by Chinese creators and starring Chinese stars, embeds many elements of content and nonsensical expression in the story of a Chinese immigrant family theme, just like a dazzling kaleidoscope.

This film not only let the audience see the brain hole wide open, win the prize even more let people surprise. "Instant Universe" swept almost all the major film awards in the United States this year, and this year's Oscars included best picture, best director, best editing, best original screenplay, best actress, best actor and best supporting actress. Yang Ziqiong also became the first Chinese actress in Oscar history because of this film.

But behind the glitz of Instant Universe awards, Netflix is also a big winner at this year's Oscars. Although Netflix still hasn't fulfilled its best picture dream, it's had a big year: 16 nominations, six awards and 22 statuettes. Compared to last year's embarrassment of 27 mentions, Netflix this year can be regarded as satisfactory.

Epic war drama All Quiet on the Western Front won four awards, including best foreign language film, best cinematography, best original music and best production design, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio won best animated film, and The Elephant Whisperers won best documentary short film, continuing Netflix's record in the documentary field.

But Netflix is proud of more than just a few Oscar-winning titles over the past year, and they've made a big splash in another area. Netflix has invested in the Asia-Pacific market for many years, focusing on Korean drama content, which has ushered in the harvest season, producing several popular TV series around the world for several consecutive years. Unsurprisingly, the second installment of Dark Glory is Netflix's hottest Korean drama of the year.

Every week, Netflix lists the top ten popular dramas on the full platform, divided into English dramas and non-English dramas. Most of the time, the most popular English drama is also the all-platform ratings champion, but there are exceptions. A handful of non-English series, such as Spanish series Money House and Korean series Squid Game, may far outnumber their English-language counterparts.

Now this honor belongs to the second book of Dark Glory. During the week of March 6 - 12, Song Hye Kyo's new drama "Dark Glory" surpassed the fourth season of the American drama "You" to become Netflix's highest-rated new drama on all platforms. It is worth mentioning that the second installment of Dark Glory was launched on March 10, which means that it took only three days for the show to become the hottest content on the platform.

In just three days, the second installment of "Glory of Darkness" has reached an astonishing 124.4 million hours of global viewing time, not only dominating the top of non-English dramas, but also far surpassing the fourth season of the hottest English drama "You," which has only 75.8 million hours of global viewing time. The last time a non-English drama was so exaggerated over an English drama was "Squid Game" in 2021.

With this viewership data, Dark Glory 2 has ranked ninth in Netflix's history of non-English TV series in the first 28 days of viewing data, and fourth in Korean TV series, behind previous hit Korean TV series Squid Game, Zombie Campus and Very Lawyer Yu Yingxi. Based on current ratings momentum, Dark Glory is likely to become Netflix's second-most popular Korean drama after Squid Game in 2021, but it's too hard to surpass the phenomenon-level Squid Game.

It is worth mentioning that "Dark Glory" is Song Huiqiao and gold screenwriter Jin Yinshu after "Descendants of the Sun" cooperation TV series again. The 2016 "Descendants of the Sun" not only swept Asia, becoming the 2016 Korean drama ratings champion, but also brought the two protagonists Song Huiqiao and Song Zhongji together. But the celebrity couple's marriage lasted only two years and officially ended in 2019. The marriage of the two has caused a lot of speculation.

After the divorce of the Korean drama queen, Song Huiqiao once suspended her acting career and did not take on a new drama for nearly two years. In 2022's "Dark Glory," her first Netflix TV series, Song played the heroine who grew up bullied and bruised with hatred in the Korean drama created by Jin Jinshu.

"Dark Glory" continues the theme of Netflix's hit Korean drama "My Name" in 2021, abandoning the love theme of traditional Korean drama, taking female narrative as the main line, and adding dark elements such as revenge, violence and blood. Sweet Queen Song Hye Kyo's role as Avenger after her marriage made this Korean drama attract enough attention in Asia.

Interestingly, Netflix not only produced Song Huiqiao's "Dark Glory," but also purchased Song Zhongji's new drama "The Little Son of the Chaebol Family," which was only broadcast in the Korean market. In November and December last year, the two new series aired on Netflix, bringing more topics and allowing fans of the two stars to argue online.

Perhaps marriage changes and online criticism let Song Huiqiao experience life setbacks, let her have a deeper understanding of the role, and this dark role also gave Song Huiqiao full acting space. In "Glory of Darkness," Song Huiqiao also realized the acting transformation at one stroke, allowing the audience to see a completely different Korean drama queen.

In its first week at the end of last year, Dark Glory ranked third in Netflix's non-English series, rising to No.1 in non-English series with 82.5 million viewing hours in its second week. The popularity of this Korean drama is not limited to East Asia, but also ranks among the top ten viewers in 62 countries and regions. Because of this, the second season of Dark Glory attracted enough attention before it was released. In the first week of its release, it received an astonishing 124 million hours of viewership data, completely crushing the hottest English drama of the same period.

After seven years of cultivating Korean dramas, the North American market has stagnated in user growth and major platforms compete fiercely for original content. Netflix's overseas expansion strategy has entered a harvest period after several years of cultivation, opening up new growth points in overseas markets and non-English content, and Korean dramas are the most successful areas.

Netflix's Korean content investment began in 2015 and is an important part of their expansion into the Asia-Pacific market. From 2016 to 2020, Netflix has created more than 200 original Asian content, in addition to South Korea, India and Southeast Asia. From 2015 to 2020, Netflix invested $700 million in Korean content (currently about 4.83 billion yuan) and about $400 million in India (currently about 2.76 billion yuan).

However, Korean content is at the heart of Netflix's Asia-Pacific strategy. In addition to purchasing Korean content copyrights, it has also built two film and television production bases in South Korea, producing more than 80 original film and television dramas, including the ancient zombie drama Kingdom written by Jin Yinji in 2019.

Heavy investment in Korean content has made Netflix the most popular streaming platform in South Korea. By the end of 2020, Netflix had 3.8 million paying subscribers in South Korea. If you count more than 22 million households in South Korea, that's 17% of South Korean households subscribed to Netflix. Asia Pacific has also become a major source of new Netflix subscribers. Netflix Asia Pacific added 1.4 million subscribers in the third quarter of last year, making it the fastest growing region in the world.

Netflix co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos has high expectations for Korean content. He said in 2018 that Netflix wanted to find more success in overseas content production and see a hit TV series outside the United States that could rival Stranger Things.

Squid game global phenomenon "Squid game" is in this context investment shooting. After Netflix opened its Asian division in 2018, Asian content executive Kim Minyoung saw Melting Pot director Hwang Dong-hyuk's script for Squid Game and immediately decided that this was what Netflix was looking for in a different traditional Korean drama, expanding the original envisaged film into a nine-episode TV series.

In September 2019, Netflix announced an investment in Huang Donghe's script with a total budget of $21.4 million (currently about 148 million yuan). In June 2020,"Squid Game" began to be officially filmed. Although the shooting work was completely interrupted due to the new crown epidemic, the preliminary shooting work was still completed by the end of 2020, and Netflix was finally launched in September 2021.

How hot is the squid game? As Netflix's hottest TV series in history, Squid Game has reached an astonishing 1.6 billion hours of global viewing hours in its first month on line, topping ratings in more than 90 countries around the world, and more than half of Netflix's global paying users have clicked on the Korean series, a huge success that even Netflix did not expect. 95% of the audience for Squid Games came from outside Korea.

According to Netflix's estimates,"Squid Game" brought $890 million (currently about 6.141 billion yuan) of "impact value" to the platform, which is Netflix's comprehensive evaluation of TV series returns based on ratings, audience numbers and other indicators. Since Netflix shows are not in theaters and there is no advertising revenue, this "impact value" becomes Netflix's measure of success and profitability of a show.

Not only did the show break Netflix ratings records, it also received recognition from the TV industry. At last year's 79th Golden Globe Awards,"Squid Game" won three nominations for best TV series, best actor and best supporting actor; although it won only best supporting actor, it was also the first time a Korean drama won the Golden Globe Award, representing a historic breakthrough for Korean drama.

With Korean music K-Pop popular all over the world in the past decade, Korean film and television has also begun to go global in the past two years. In 2020, South Korean film "Parasites" beat "1917" and "Hollywood Past," becoming the first foreign language film to win the Oscar for best picture, and winning several important awards for best director, best original screenplay and best foreign language film at the same time.

Although Parasite is not a Netflix production, the global success of the Korean film has not only made viewers around the world interested in Korean TV series, but also provided more motivation for Netflix to invest more in Korean programming. In 2021, Squid Games became a global phenomenon, becoming the most popular TV series in Netflix history.

Also in the past two years, Netflix's Korean dramas have begun to shed the stereotypes of romantic love and explore some cruel, dark, and realistic themes of female awakening. "Squid Game" launched at the height of the new crown epidemic, in line with the global public's strong dissatisfaction with the status quo and repression of pain, while "Dark Glory" allows female viewers to see the pleasure of awakening, resistance and revenge.

The popularity of these non-traditional Korean drama themes has also brought Netflix Korean dramas to the global market. In addition to these two dramas, Netflix's "Sweet Home" and "Very Lawyer Yu Ying" in 2022 have also been recognized in the global market, entering the top three of the all-platform ratings.

Netflix is also increasing its investment in South Korea after investing heavily in Korean TV dramas. In early 2021, Netflix announced in Seoul, South Korea, that it would invest $500 million that year to build Korean content. In addition, Netflix subsidiary Scanline VFX announced plans to invest $100 million in South Korea to form a special effects team to build South Korea into an Asian film and television content production center. In 2022, Netflix did not disclose the specific scale of Korean drama investment, but said it would not be lower than the previous year's level.

Netflix co-CEO and chief content officer Salandos told Korean directors and stars,"In the past two years, we have seen the world fall in love with incredible Korean content, and the world is watching Neflix content created in Korea." More than 60 percent of global subscribers have watched Korean dramas in the past year. "

Netflix produced a total of 15 Korean TV series in 2020, increasing that number to 25 in 2021. Netflix plans to release 34 Korean TV series this year, both new and follow-up, covering everything from drama to thriller.

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