‘Good Job,’ ‘Wife’ Top Asian Film Market’s E-IP Pitching, Book to Film Winners List

By Sonia Kil

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Busan’s Asian Film Market announced the winners Oct. 8 of E-IP Pitching and Book to Film programs in which intellectual properties, including web comics, novels and story ideas, are pitched for film and TV adaptation.

The NEW Creator awards, sponsored by leading local studio Next Entertainment World, went to Han Ji-su’s mystery romance novel “The Sixth Wife” and Haewon’s crime thriller “Good Job.” “Good Job” is a story about two hopeless job-seekers that become entangled in a whirlwind of greed, conspiracy and betrayal when they are hired by a cleaning company. Each winner received a cash prize of $8,800 (KRW 10 million).

Seo Eun-chae’s fantasy romance novel “A Week Before I Die,” Lee Yun-kyun’s web comic “Delivery Knight,” Yoon Seon-young’s high school-set story “Land of Silence” and “The Devil,” a web comic written by Meen and drawn by Keun bit each won prizes named for new sponsor Tory Comics, a global web comic platform that provides web comic services in 12 languages to some 141 countries. The winners each received cash rewards of $4,400 (KRW 5 million).

The Audience Awards, which do not come with cash prizes, went to “The Insect,” Jang Min-hye’s mystery thriller about a young offender and a single mother that track down a serial murderer together, and Suo’s mystery thriller story “Devil School.”

In South Korea, web comics have served as source material for successful film adaptations. Pan-Asian hits “Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds” and its sequel “Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days” are film adaptations of a web comic of the same title, “Along With the Gods.” A hit from 2015, crime drama “Inside Men,” was a loose adaptation of a web comic. According to a research conducted by Korea Creative Contents Agency, some 6,800 titles were published in Korea last year, and the country’s web comic market is worth about $440 million (KRW 500 billion).