Netflix had a good 2021, especially the last four-to-five months; and even more particularly, in India. A major factor is a sudden spike in the marketing of South Korean content – especially after the global success of the Korean phenomenon, ‘Squid Game‘. During the year that Netflix was losing one of its big TV shows in ‘Money Heist’, the OTT platform managed to find a replacement in the aforementioned web series – as well as find a new popular industry overnight. The “South Korean Wave” continued with some brilliant shows like ‘My Name’ and ‘Hellbound‘ – but said “Wave” came to a crashing halt after the expensive flop, ‘The Silent Sea‘.
On paper, everything about the show looked brilliant – they had a brilliant cast featuring International stars Gong Yoo and Bae Doona, the plot of the film (which is explained in the first 15 minutes of the first episode) was very promising and it had brilliant production value for a sci-fi web series. However, leaps in logic (within the plot), too many cliches and plot holes made the Netflix series a tough sell and an even tougher watch. The show may be visually stunning in some places, but similar to the recent Malayalam flop, ‘Marakkar: Lion of The Arabian Sea’ – that was all the show really had.
Still, the “South Korean Wave” has been impressive so far. Sure, there have been other popular South Korean content that had dropped on the OTT platform before, such as ‘Vincenzo’ and ‘Kingdom’ – but it didn’t grab the attention of the International audiences like ‘Squid Game’ (and its successors) did. While ‘The Silent Sea’s’ reception may have slowed the “wave” down – it is, by no means, finished. We expect the streaming platform to continue to release quality South Korean shows, despite this setback.
The OTT platform was initially losing ground to Amazon Prime Video earlier in the year (within India), but ‘Squid Game’, ‘Money Heist’ and ‘Minnal Murali’ has helped make 2021 Netflix’s year. Hopefully, we will see more of the same in 2022 as well.
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