©
2025. All Rights Reserved.
Various companies, HYBE included, are releasing their own Q1 revenue reports of 2025, highlighting their ups and downs so far in the year. South Korea's production powerhouse, Studio Dragon, just released their Q1 revenue report on May 8th. Despite its reputation and celebrated collection of shows, its Q1 performance of 2025 was far from stellar and admittedly fell short of expectations.
A Shift In Episode Models - How K-Drama Series With Fewer Episodes Have Become The Majority In The IndustryK-Drama StoriesFeb 25, 2025
The struggles of Studio Dragon are clear and may come across as a worrying trend. However, they also recognize their shortcomings and are working to come back stronger. Through the report they also share their plans to reinvigorate the company's growth and to create a profit in the latter half of this year. Read on to find out how their 2025 has been so far and how they plan to reach new highs once again.
Is The First Quarter Usually Slow For Production Companies?
Studio Dragon Official Instagram
Production companies like Studio Dragon often treat Q1 of the year as a setup period for a number of different reasons. These reasons include programming cycles, production lag, as well as distribution timelines.
Just like many other industries, production companies have both a high and low season. The high season typically occurs in the second and fourth quarter. Q2 is a time where students and vacationers tend to have much more free time to indulge in their hobbies: which may include watching shows on TV or streaming platforms. Q4 can be quite busy with the influx of holidays, however, shows released during this time can be considered flagship titles with the purpose of earning various awards and attention from sponsors.
Considering all the effort put into promoting shows for award season in Q4, companies often go into a cooldown phase at the beginning of the year. They use this time to reset and work on projects that are still in pre-production or in the early stages of shooting. Then there's the fact that international streaming platforms typically finalize pre-buy and co-production deals in Q1 in order to set a later release date. As seen from the data, the first half of 2025 only has 2 prebuy titles and 1 global title, opposed to the 5+ pre-buys and 2+ global orders planned for the second half of this year.
Studio Dragon
Studio Dragon
In the first quarter of 2025 Studio Dragon released various high profile series that included "When The Stars Gossip" (starring Lee MinHo, Kong HyoJin, etc.), "The Queen Who Crowns" & "The Queen Who Crowns: Before Sunrise" (starring Cha JooYoung, Lee HyunWook, etc.), "Study Group" (starring Hwang MinHyun, Han JiEun, Cha WooMin, Shin SuHyun, etc.), and "My Dearest Nemesis" (starring Mun KaYoung, Choi HyunWook, Im SeMi, Kwak ShiYang, etc.). "Study Group" in particular had an amazing run, placing no. 1 on TVING for 4 weeks and has since confirmed a second season in the works. However, the drama's success still was not enough to stave off the slow Q1 start.
Enjoy full access for just $1
Join over 10,000 active members!
🌟 Special Contents for Subscribers
