EXCLUSIVE: The creative team behind Hong Kong breakout animated feature Another World are developing a second theatrical feature together, Blacky The Metal Arm Cat, which they’re presenting to potential partners at Busan’s Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM).

Produced by two Hong Kong animation outfits – Another World producer Point Five Creations and rising animation house Intoxic Studio – the 2D project is written and directed by veteran animator Nic Ho (Mountains And Seas) based on his acclaimed short film.

The project is spearheaded by Point Five’s Polly Yeung, with Another World director Tommy Ng Kai-chung on board as art director. Intoxic Studio’s Ivana Lai is co-producing the film.

The creative team describe the project as blending “high-stakes action, urban fantasy and imaginative world-building to explore identity, resilience and human purpose.”

Set in the ancient metropolis of Golden City, the film tells the story of a legendary warrior, once known as “Golden Claw”, who suffers a fall from grace following a devastating betrayal. He is saved by an enigmatic young mechanic who equips him with a custom mechanical arm. But when the mechanic suddenly disappears, he is forced to descend into a mysterious underworld and confront an alien presence in order to bring her back.

“Blacky is not a story about becoming a hero; it is a story about rediscovering yourself after loss,” said director Nic Ho. “We live in an era where technology and society shift rapidly – where the skills or identities we took pride in can feel obsolete overnight. This film reflects that generation-wide feeling of loss through modern, action-packed storytelling, showing what it means to find a reason to keep moving forward.”

Yeung also guided Another World from its roots as a short film into a theatrical feature. The film became Hong Kong’s highest-grossing local animated feature of all time and scooped Best Animated Feature at Taiwan’s prestigious Golden Horse Awards. Yeung will be introducing Blacky The Metal Arm Cat to potential co-producers, financiers and sales agents at ACFM.

Point Five Creations has also partnered with Korean webtoon studio Creative SUMM to produce a webtoon expansion of Another World, with support from Hong Kong’s CreateSmart Initiative (CSI).

Produced by Yeung in collaboration with Creative SUMM, and with SuperString Inc producer BeeWon Lee on board as co-producer, the webtoon serves as a launchpad for a broader transmedia expansion of Another World. Tommy Ng is also working on the webtoon as a project supervisor. Yeung and Eden Bernal are co-writing the script.

It will focus on the fan favourite character of Dark Sky in Another World – a headless swordsman who serves as an assassin and a guardian – as Point Five Creations prepares future film and series entries in the franchise.

CSI, which is supporting the transmedia expansion, is an initiative under Hong Kong’s Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency (CCIDA).

Led by CEO Cho Hea-seung, Creative SUMM is a leading Korean content studio known internationally for producing mega-hit webtoon The Red Sleeve, which accumulated over 100 million views and inspired the hit MBC television drama, as well as acclaimed webtoons including Leafie, A Hen Into The Wild, Beauty Water, and Underdog.

EXCLUSIVE: Mockingbird Pictures is launching three new titles at Busan’s Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM), heading a slate of horror, supernatural mystery, comedy and family drama, as the range of genre films emerging from Vietnam and Southeast Asia continues to expand.

Horror, the bedrock of Southeast Asian genre cinema, features prominently on the slate, through two new titles – Indonesia’s The Doll Ghawiah and Vietnam’s The River Demon (Út Lan 2). However, another new title, Bluebells Studios’ The Happiest Cell, is a prison-set comedy drama revealing that Vietnamese studios are moving beyond horror to experiment with different genres.

Directed by Guntur Soeharjanto, The Doll Ghawiah is the latest chapter in Hitmaker Studios’ long-running The Doll universe, a franchise that has drawn around 5 million admissions in Indonesia. Set in 1988, this new installment follows a family who leaves Jakarta for Bandung in search of a fresh start, only to be terrorized by the restless spirit of a young girl and her doll, Ghawiah.

The River Demon, directed by Tran Trong Dan, pushes Mockingbird’s slate into darker territory with an intense supernatural horror story rooted in Vietnamese folk beliefs. Following the success of The Guardian Demon, the film expands the filmmaker’s exploration of curses, rural legends and buried secrets through the story of a haunted riverside village, where the emergence of a two-headed serpent marks the beginning of a series of terrifying events.

Directed by Nguyen Nhat Trung, The Happiest Cell features a star-studded cast headed by Tuan Tran (Leaving Mom), Ma Ran Do (Hijacked) and Luong The Thanh (Betting With Ghost). Scheduled for release in Vietnam on November 20, the film is described as a “story that finds humor, friendship and humanity inside one of society’s harshest environments”.

Meanwhile, some of Mockingbird’s older titles are finding success at the box office and through international sales. Zero Meets Hero (Nghỉ Hè Sợ Nghỉ Hưu), directed by Huynh Lap, recently closed its domestic run with nearly $8M (VND207.7BN), making it the third-highest-grossing Vietnamese film of 2026. Blending comedy, family drama and supernatural elements, the film revolves around the relationship between a Gen Z grandson and his war-veteran grandfather.

Luck For Sale (Lên Hương), directed by Khuong Ngoc, is set for U.S. theatrical release on October 9 across AMC, Regal and Cinemark theaters, accompanied by special screenings and a promotional tour with the film’s director and cast. The film is built around themes of family, mortality and generational wounds.

“We are not looking for one single formula for Southeast Asian cinema,” said Phong Duong, Business Director of Mockingbird Pictures. “What excites us is the range – established franchises, box office performers, culturally rooted genre films, emotionally driven dramas and major star-led productions. Southeast Asia is producing increasingly diverse commercial cinema, and our role is to help each film find the international audience and market where it can connect most strongly.”

In addition to international sales, Mockingbird Pictures is also a distributor of local and international films in Vietnam, handling around 60 theatrical releases and more than 100 post-theatrical titles annually.

Remaking Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic Japanese kidnap drama High and Low was a good idea, and last year Spike Lee did exactly that with his own homage to the master in Highest 2 Lowest, a contemporary update set in the music business in New York City and starring Denzel Washington. In both films the wealthy father finds himself in a moral quandary when it turns out kidnappers have gotten the wrong kid to hold for ransom; in the case of Lee’s film it is the chauffeur’s son. It sparks a moral conundrum asking is a life worth the same amount no matter who you are?

I quite liked what Lee did with the premise in Highest 2 Lowest, and Washington added many layers to the performance of a man caught in a real bind, especially as his business is on the decline. I am not sure anyone was asking for yet another remake, but producer, director and co-writer Ben Affleck is essentially offering one up — if not exactly openly stating that his new movie, Animals, is directly related to Kurosawa’s or Lee’s. There is no mention of either film in the press notes, and this movie involves a lot of twists, turns and story threads to make it stand on its own, but the bones of High and Low certainly appear to have been an influence.

In Animals, Affleck plays Mark Kimball, a longshot candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles whose campaign is in financial trouble just days before the election. Kimball is a progressive candidate who holds rallies in the heavily Latino voter areas speaking note-perfect Spanish, as if that is all the cred he will need to overcome the odds and come from behind. Urged by his manager Sam (Steven Yeun) to pour what money he has left into the race, he does just that, drying up his family’s funds without telling his wife, Abby (Kerry Washington).

RELATED: Ben Affleck Campaigned For Mayor In LA As ‘Animals’ Character: “Do Not Vote For Me!”

It is also crystal clear his marriage isn’t all that rosy these days as there is friction with his wife who is unhappy but holding it all in for the sake of the campaign, even as she is completely detached from it all. There is another clue we are given that this marriage is on the rocks as both sides are harboring secrets from each other. Still, they keep up a good face on this Halloween, helping son Denny (Christopher Woodley) decide on his costume, and even agreeing to let Hector (Jacob Estrada), the son of handyman Ramon (Luis Gerardo Mendez), join him trick or treating. Cecilia (Adrianna Paz), the Kimballs’ housekeeper and Denny’s nanny who is also Ramon’s girlfriend, chaperones the boys as they head out into the night.

So we have a failing political campaign, a rocky marriage, financial problems, what else? Well, a phone call a few hours later from a deep-voiced criminal demanding $7 million ransom for the return of Denny puts a wrinkle into everything. Both parents freak out and things get worse when Mark must admit to his wife that the funds she thought they had has just been spent on his losing campaign. Sam, a jack of all trades apparently, has a solution and brings in a fixer, stone-faced Dayle Burton (Gillian Anderson), who steps out of a limo and into their lives with the promise she can float them the money, provided they pay it back with her additional $1 million+ fee, in order to bring their boy safely home. However, the night is still young and the script (Affleck wrote with Billy Ray and Connor O’McIntyre) in this ever-evolving scenario is full of twists and turns.

After smart directorial turns with films like his Oscar-winning Argo, The Town , Air and Gone Baby Gone, this film feels as if Affleck is biting off a little too much, throwing too much at the wall to see what sticks. The action is all over the place. Is Animals trying to be a story about a marriage in crisis and the secrets husbands and wives hide? Or is it a lurid kidnapping crime thriller? Or is it a comment on the pitfalls of politics and the character of those who aim to lead? Or is it about race, class, the haves vs. the have nots? The answer is it is trying to be all of that — and more — and in the process it feels a bit like, tonally, Affleck isn’t quite sure of which path to take.

On the surface it has the kidnap plot front and center and that would be enough, but in the midst of that we are looking at a movie changing gears and watching this marriage implode even as a true life-or-death situation stares them in the face. They are constantly fighting with each other at loud decibels. The story takes on operatic melodramatic turns, even to the point of a seriously ludicrous bedroom confrontation after an uncomfortable discovery by Mark about Abby: “I just WANT my WIFE to f*ck me!” Mark exclaims at one point. “I WANT to f*ck my HUSBAND,” replies Abby. Okay, but what about the ransom and the kidnappers and the mayoral campaign, you know, all of THAT?

Netflix, which is day-and-dating this release by putting it nominally in theaters while heading straight to streaming, is asking that certain plot spoilers not be revealed, so I won’t say more. I had high hopes for this one since earlier this year I thought Netflix’s Joe Carnahan-directed thriller The Rip with Affleck, Yeun and Matt Damon was a fantastic example of genre filmmaking across the board. I did see Animals in a packed theater at its premiere and can tell you this is the kind of crowd-pleaser that plays best that way. The audience (including a lot of influencers) was literally talking back to the screen, buying into every head-spinning plot turn that appears.

For me, too much of this is just way over the top, and that includes the performances. Affleck is a really good actor but it might have helped here to dial it back a bit, a downside of directing yourself I guess. Considering he is running for L.A. mayor, not a low-profile activity, Mark’s ability to eventually go full-boat Jean Claude Van Damme without being noticed seems uh, unlikely. And why do they not get the cops involved right from the start? Ah, I ask too many questions, just go with it.

Washington, a compelling performer, also is asked to be hysterical a bit too much. I enjoyed Anderson’s clipped intimidating delivery of every line. Yeun manages to keep his cool like an interested observer who throws out useful suggestions every now and then. Paz and Mendez gallantly try to rise above the stereotyped household-help roles with which they are saddled.

Shout-out to film editors William Goldenbeg and Christopher Rouse, who clearly got marching orders to keep this thing moving like a freight train; with Affleck’s propulsive direction, they do just that. You won’t be bored, but you may be scratching your head wondering when it is going to stop to let you just breathe. Despite the far-fetched plot developments, some moments undeniably work and keep the blood pumping, others not so much. In the end Animals is a movie of highs and lows with nothing that makes much sense in between.

Producers are Brad Weston, Collin Creighton, Affleck, Matt Damon, Dani Bernfeld and Luciana Damon.

Title: Animals
Distributor: Netflix
Release date: October 9, 2026 (limited theatrical and streaming)
Director: Ben Affleck
Screenwriters: Ben Affleck, Billy Ray, Connor O’McIntyre
Cast: Ben Affleck, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson, Adriana Paz, Ray Fisher, Christopher Woodley, Matt Gerald, Jacob Estrada, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Steven Yeun
Rating: R
Running time: 1 hr 46 mins