UTA and Gold House are joining forces at the Busan International Film Festival and in Seoul this month, marking the Asian Pacific advocacy organization’s first official foray into Korea as the two look to connect Asian creatives and investors with Hollywood. The partnership kicks off with the UTA x Gold House x Variety Industry Night at the Park Hyatt on Friday (Oct. 9). The two companies will then stage a panel, “Hollywood & the Asian Diaspora,” at the Asian Contents & Film Market on Oct. 10, before moving to Seoul on Oct. 13 for a speakeasy party for cross-cultural creatives, funders and founders.
David Park, a senior partner and agent at UTA, notes that the agency has worked in Asia, particularly Korea and Japan, for several years. Until now, Gold House’s formal footprint in Asia had been limited to Singapore and Taiwan. Christine Yi, executive VP and president, Gold House Studios., is of Korean heritage, as is Daniel Suh, who runs the organization’s venture capital fund.
The pair made an exploratory trip to Korea around this time last year to meet people in the local industry and ask what role Gold House could play. You don’t really have to reinvent the wheel,” Yi says. The right moment would have been sometime in the past, so I would say that we’re actually overdue,” Yi adds, pointing to Gold House’s investments in Korean startups and the number of its investors based in the country.
Neither side has a formal, ongoing program in place yet. Gold House launched Gold House Studios, its in-house production arm, this year, and Yi plans to use the Korea trip to meet creatives the company wants to work with. On what they look for in Asian talent and IP, both point to authenticity.
The company’s track record also leans heavily on first features, a stage where filmmakers “need someone to really take a bet on them.” Yi is also eyeing Korean talent-led projects. She won’t name names, but says a singer from a group that would come up “within your first couple” if one listed the top K-pop acts in the world has approached Gold House about making a film. But I think the way that her team wanted to approach us is like, ‘You guys might not be exactly the people, for whatever reason.
However, we trust that you know who the right people are if it is not you, and to help us really navigate the U.S.,’” Yi says. Park’s touchstones for authenticity include “Parasite,” whose upstairs-downstairs class story landed in France, and “KPop Demon Hunters,” from his client Maggie Kang. He would also like to see Korea tackle horror comedy.
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