music festivals have evolved from countercultural gatherings to a booming industry. This week, we take a Deep Dive into the economics behind the beats.

 - Did you know: the first-ever music festival took place in Ancient Greece during the 582 BC Pythian Games, featuring hymns and performances in honour of Apollo, God of the arts?

 - Rooted in a love for music and celebration, these events have evolved to become highly commercialised experiences due to hefty production costs and people's expectations for something new and better every year.

 - With the rise of the experience economy, festivals are incorporating immersive experiences catering to the younger generation's desire for shareable moments.

 - Music festivals are notoriously bad at reporting attendance data, so most published figures are rough estimates.

Organizers are coming up with new ideas to attract visitors. For example festival-goers seeking an experience on a different scale, Florida's Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival is held completely underwater. The event blends entertainment with environmental awareness to champion eco-conscious diving and coral reef protection. In Asia there are also more and festivals starting so music enthusiasts don't have to travel far to experience the upbeat atmosphere of a music festival.

The top five highest grossing festivals in the world in 2023 (in USD):

1) Outside lands Music and Art Festival (USA): $40.1 million
2) Hard Summer Music Festival (USA): $29.9 million
3) Tecate Pa'l Norte (Mexico): $20.7 million
4) Lollapalooza Brazil (Brazil): $19.7 million
5) CMA Music Festival (USA): $19.3 million

One of the biggest music festival scandal in history: The Fyre Festival, which cost millions of dollars that visitors paid and got nothing for it, and also sent main organizer Billy McFarland to prison for four years for fraud.

The release date has been postponed, depending on China Film Commission decision current best estimates are for late summer.

For the next four years China's entertainment industry is predicted to grow with twice of the U.S. growth and set to close the gap on the U.S. Advertising and consumer spending revenues in the world's second most populous country will shoot up by more than 7% to $362.5B by 2028, according to the report, rising at almost double the rate of the U.S., although the American industry's figure will remain significantly higher at $808.4B.

The U.S., representing more than one-third of global spending in 2023, remains the world's biggest entertainment and media market for the combined advertising and consumer spending markets by a wide margin, but this scale brings with it maturity and hence relatively slower growth. On the other hand China's entertainment industry has been expanding in recent years and continued strong growth means it's steadily closing the gap in terms of market size.

The fastest growing markets between this year and 2028 will be Indonesia and India, the report forecasted, predicting "rapid growth" over the coming years in these territories.

PWC highlighted that each of these nations has its own distinctive market dynamics, pointing to India becoming the world's fastest-growing video-streaming market over the period serving its vast, diverse and widely dispersed population, many of whom are obsessed with sports content in general, and cricket in particular. By 2028 and having grown by more than 8%, India's industry will be worth just shy of $100B, the report said, with Indonesia's a little way behind. The report focused heavily on how advertising revenues are developing in the streaming era, predicting that global ad revenues will top a whopping $1 trillion in two years' time.

By 2028, these revenues will have doubled the figure of 2020, as predicted. It pointed to a "plateauing effect" that has "pushed leading streamers such as Netflix, Disney and Prime Video to reshape their business models and find new revenue streams," including ads and crackdowns on password sharing.

"The big three Western global players in the streaming sector: Disney+, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, all rolled out ad-funded 'hybrid tier' offerings, in which consumers agree to view ads in return for paying a lower subscription fee.

With 1.6 million viewers TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN remains the most watched Hong Kong film in cinemas in Hong Kong. The previous record of 1.53 million viewers was set by court drama A GUILTY CONSCIENCE last year, also the highest-grossing film with a box office of HK$115 million.

If you have not see the film yet, the plot is as follows: many years after the bloody turf war that ushered in an uneasy era of peace in Hong Kong's underworld, the notorious Kowloon Walled City serves as a fortified, lawless safe haven for gangs and refugees alike, but when a skilled underground fighter runs afoul of the most feared Triad boss in Hong Kong, a bounty is placed on his head despite his connections to the leader of the infamous enclave. As his pursuers violate the tenuous territorial truce to exact their vengeance, the fallout reignites old grudges, bringing decades of building tension to a brutal, bloody boiling point.

The project had been in development since the 2000s, where it was set to be co-directed by John Woo and Johnnie To and star an all-star cast of Chow Yun-fat, Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Sean Lau, Louis Koo, Anthony Wong, Sun Honglei, Anita Yuen and Zhang Jingchu, with Nicolas Cage, James McAvoy, Li Baotian, Jang Dong-gun, Li Bingbing and Zhang Fengyi making special appearances, as shown on a teaser poster, although nothing was confirmed. On 13 April 2013, Media Asia announced the project was to be titled DRAGON CITY and set to be directed by Derek Kwok and starring Donnie Yen, who would also serve as action director and producer through his production company, Super Hero Films, and was set to begin production in September of that year.

After seemingly stuck in development chaos for several years, Media Asia once again announced the project on 28 February 2021, with Soi Cheang set to direct while Koo, Richie Jen and Zhang Jin are set to star. Principal photography for the film officially began on 22 November 2021, although the cast was not revealed yet until the film held its production commencement ceremony on 30 November, which was attended by Cheang, producers John Chong and Wilson Yip and cast members Koo, Sammo Hung, Jen, Raymond Lam, Terrance Lau, Kenny Wong, Tony Wu, German Cheung, Philip Ng, Chu Pak Hong and Chung Suet Ying. Koo revealed that two replica sets of the Kowloon Walled City were built for filming, while actual magazines, record albums, televisions and commercials from the 1980s will be used as props. All the main cast spent a year training to prepare for the film's fight scenes. On 3 April 2022, filming was officially wrapped and the film went into the post-production process.

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In is directed by Soi Cheang, and produced by John Chong and Wilson Yip, with stunts and action choreographed by Tanigaki Kenji. The action film stars Louis Koo, Raymond Lam, Terrance Lau, Philip Ng, Tony Wu Tsz Tung, German Cheung, Richie Jen, Wong Tak Pun Kenny, Fish Liew, Chu Pak Hong, Cecilia Choi, Lau Wai Ming, Aaron Kwok, and Sammo Hung.

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Why is Hong Kong box office down so much? Share your opinion and what do you think needed to bring up the attendance numbers again.

Paramount Global and Skydance Media have reached a deal to merge the two media companies together, according to a Sunday joint statement. The proposed merger comes after reports of renewed talks between the two companies emerged earlier in the month and after months of interest from various potential bidders.

Paramount Global and David Ellison's Skydance Media said the merger will occur in two steps. According to the companies, the Skydance Investor Group will pay $2.4 billion for National Amusements Inc, the company through which Shari Redstone controls Paramount. The two companies pegged the enterprise value of New Paramount at about $28 billion.

"Our hope is that the Skydance transaction will enable Paramount's continued success in this rapidly changing environment," Redstone said in a statement. "As a longtime production partner to Paramount, Skydance knows Paramount well and has a clear strategic vision and the resources to take it to its next stage of growth." The companies said they hope to "re-imagine the Company's operating model, transform its technological platform, streamline its organization and accelerate other initiatives already underway" through the merger.

The 9 reasons why Hong Kong films are successful around the World.

Hong Kong is a small place. So how come its films have done so well around the world? Movies produced in Hong Kong were distributed across Asia by Shaw Brothers studios, and found international success during the 1970s, and again in the 1990s. What are the reasons for this success?

1. Hong Kong films are highly entertaining

The main reason for the success of Hong Kong cinema is because of the industry's highly entertaining films. "How did this tiny cinema industry become so successful? Some answers lie in history and culture, but many others are found in the films themselves," he wrote. "Hong Kong's film industry offered something audiences desired. Year in and year out, it produced dozens of fresh, lively and thrilling movies. Since the 1970s it has been arguably the world's most energetic, imaginative popular cinema."

2. They broke down cultural barriers

Hong Kong action films became an international cultural currency, film historians Law Kar and Frank Bren wrote in their book Hong Kong Cinema: A Cross-Cultural View. "The martial arts boom of the late 1960s and early 1970s represented a success in marrying the foreign and the indigenous," they wrote. "Fights evolved from a stylised stage-based mode to a more realistic, visceral one bolstered by photographic and editing techniques learned from Western and Japanese films, and by special effects developed from years of making martial arts films."

3. They connected with marginalised people

Hong Kong films appealed to underdogs everywhere, wrote Wu-Tang Clan's RZA in the introduction to his book These Fists Break Bricks. "The violence of the New York City streets reflected the violence on screen. Looking for stories that reflected their own struggles, audiences could role-change at any moment, inspired by the characters they watched.

4. Filmmakers were free to be outrageous

Hong Kong films fitted in with the "anything goes" attitudes of the West in the 1970s and audiences liked that, according to the Hong Kong Film Archive essay Creating a Uniquely Hong Kong 1970s. "During the 1970s politically sensitive content was still censored, but restrictions on sexual content, violence, and crime became increasingly lax. Consequently, bloodshed, debauchery, nudity, gambling, fraud, and gangsters were frequently featured in Hong Kong cinema.

5. Foreign critics threw caution to the wind

Western critics thought they should not like Hong Kong films, but actually did, Matthew Polly wrote in Bruce Lee - A Life. "Even New York critics, who wrung their hands at Enter the Dragon's violence, sensed its power. The New York Times declared, 'The picture is expertly made and well meshed. It moves like lightning and brims with colour...' "In The Village Voice, William Paul confessed: 'In my most civilised, right thinking frame of mind, I'd like to dismiss the film as an abhorrently grotesque masculine fantasy, but I have to admit that deep down in the most shadowy recesses of my subconscious, the fantasy struck a chord.'"

6. Hong Kong cinema was always international

Hong Kong filmmakers were always engaged with the global movie scene, according to the book The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study. And talking about Shaw Brothers, the largest film production company in Hong Kong for decades, it said: "Throughout the years, the studio has engaged in collaborative exchanges with companies in Asia, Europe and America, and recruited talent from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia and Western countries.

"Shaw's enormous contribution to the transnationalism, internationalisation and modernisation of Hong Kong cinema once resulted in the title 'Hollywood East' being given to Hong Kong."

7. Filmmakers had support in high places

Top US directors helped raise the global awareness of Hong Kong films in the 1990s, Rick Baker wrote in the 1994 edition of The Essential Guide to Hong Kong Movies. "Hong Kong cinema in the 1990s has started to look healthier with recognition from some of the bigger names in Hollywood, like Scorsese, Tarantino, Stallone, Joel Silver, and Walter Hill. Their seal of approval has made it fashionable to like Hong Kong movies. "It's easy to spot the influence on many big-budget Hollywood movies. The changing style of fight choreography and the stylised shoot outs are the most apparent."

8. Hong Kong films are fast and furious

Hong Kong's fast-paced action scenes are loved abroad. They are a result of the city's frantic lifestyle, critic and filmmaker Shu Kei said in the book Cine East in 1998. "I think that Hong Kong cinema is determined not only by the nationality and character of the people, but also by the geography of the city. Hong Kong cinema is defined by a very condensed and concentrated geography which results in a lack of space and a speeding up of the rhythm. "It has less expository scenes than other cinemas and that is a result of the high speed of Hong Kong life and the way that the city operates at a high speed level."

9. They drew in international viewers

Hong Kong films made foreign viewers feel special, said academic Leon Hunt in his 2002 study Kung Fu Cult Masters. "The kung fu film allows the 'outsider' to feel like an 'insider' - that of the cult aficionado, the hardcore fan who knows the difference between Mantis and Crane, Shaolin and Wudang, northern leg and southern fist. "This esoteric cult capital, which is often nostalgic for old martial arts films with 'authentic' techniques, is sometimes transformed into new urban mythologies, such as the Wu-Tang Clan's kung fu-inspired hip hop, or The Matrix's cyber-mysticism."

What do you think? Do you agree with all 9 points? Do you have more comments about why Hong Kong cinema is popular around the world? Please sign up and share you opinion and your favorite movie titles.

International martial arts star Yayan Ruhian (Boy Kills World) has been cast as the main villain in the upcoming Korean actioner Ji directed by Pedring Lopez, the project will be produced by the Philippines' Black Ops Studios Asia and Singapore's Very Tay Media, and co-produced by Asia Media Alliance.

Plot: the story follows Jin Eun-Ji, a reclusive leader of the Yong Syndicate in South Korea. When a rival syndicate kidnaps her mother in an attempt to lure her out and destroy the Yong's seat of power, she must embark on a violent rescue mission against very power-hungry Indonesian gangs at the behest of Manila's most ruthless crime lords, and bring her mother home.

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The first half of 2024 saw the Hong Kong box office plummet 17% year-on-year despite the record-breaking performance of local hit Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In. The action feature, which premiered at Cannes, recorded nearly 1.6 million admissions, surpassing 2023's A Guilty Conscience to become the highest ever recorded for a local film in Hong Kong and the second highest ever when including foreign films. It is also the second local title to ever top HK$100m at the local box office, following A Guilty Conscience, which hit that milestone last year and remains the highest grossing Hong Kong of all time.

Comedy sequel Table For Six 2 took second place followed by The Moon Thieves in fourth, We 12 in sixth and Rob N Roll in seventh. All were released at Chinese New Year with the exception of We 12, an action comedy starring all 12 members of popular Cantopop boy band Mirror, which proved a hit over the Easter holiday.

Import success

The biggest imports were sci-fi Dune: Part 2 in third followed by Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire in fifth, and Japanese animation Spy x Family Code: White in eighth; a total of 143 films including 22 local titles were released in the first six months in Hong Kong.

Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In is set for a trilogy, with a prequel and sequel in the works. It received its international premiere in the Midnight Screenings section of Cannes in May and will receive its North American premiere as the closing film of the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) later this month.

Hong Kong box office: H1 2024

- Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In / $13.4m/HK$105.1m
- Table For Six 2 / $4.78m/HK$37.36m
- Dune: Part Two* / $4.6m/HK$35.99m
- The Moon Thieves / $3.53m/HK$27.55m
- Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire / $3.22m/HK$25.18m
- We 12 / $2.89m/HK$22.31m
- Rob N Roll / $2.72m/HK$21.22m
- Spy x Family Code: White* / $2.34m/HK$18.27m
- Kung Fu Panda 4 / $2.03m/HK$15.82m
- Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes / $1.86m/HK$14.51m

China's box office in the first six months of 2024 is down 9% year-on-year despite a strong start at Chinese New Year. Ticket sales from the first half of the year were also the lowest since 2016, whichexcludes 2020 and 2022 when cinemas were closed for lengthy periods due to the Covid pandemic.

Cinema admissions dipped 8.9% year-on-year to 550 million, while the average ticket price stands at just over $6 (RMB43.4), which has remained relatively stable for the last three years.

Chinese New Year once again proved to be the most important season, the eight-day holiday which ran from February 10-17 this year, set a new record as the biggest Chinese New Year to date, representing 33.9% of the total revenue for the first half of 2024, however, box office takings fizzled out by the halfway mark. The month of June was down 46% year-on-year and marking the lowest month of 2024. Chinese novel adaptation 'Moments We Shared' was the top film for the month and generated 16.1% of the monthly total following its opening on June 22.

Local audiences continued to embrace local productions, which accounted for six of the top 10 titles in the first half of the year. Four local Chinese New Year films led the box office: Yolo, Pegasus 2, Article 20 and animation Boonie Bears: Time Twist. These were followed by Johnny Keep Walking, which opened on December 29, in fifth place, and The Last Frenzy, which opened during the May 1 holiday, in eighth place.

Import success

Unlike 2023 when local productions claimed all the top 10 slots in the annual chart, a slightly more diverse range of films cracked the top 10 in the first six months with the biggest import, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire ranked sixth with $134.7m (RMB956.4m). Hollywood films were still playing catch-up with local Chinese productions. Kung Fu Panda 4 ($52.5m/RMB372.6m) and Dune: Part Two ($49.7m/RMB352.6m), the second and third biggest Hollywood films respectively sat outside the top 10. Studio Ghibli's animation The Boy And The Heron by acclaimed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki came in seventh with $111.4m (RMB 790.8m).

A slew of blockbuster films is scheduled for release in the coming weeks, which the industry hopes will break the downward spiral at the box office. These include Sam Quah's A Place Called Silence, Song Haolin's Welcome To My Side, Yin Ruoxin's Stand By Me, Successor by Yan Fei and Peng Damo and Under One Person by Wuershan and Xia Peng. Hollywood titles include Despicable Me 4 and Deadpool & Wolverine.