It’s no secret that big cinematic moments like a valiant Superman (David Corenswet) fighting a fire-breathing Kaiju in the most recent “Superman” or a courageous Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) avoiding the hungry jaws of a gargantuan Mosasaurus in “Jurassic World: Rebirth” wouldn’t be possible without jaw-dropping VFX. Summer blockbusters rely on spectacular visuals to coax audiences into theaters, to the tune of millions and billions of dollars all around the world. The demand for creative, top-tier visual effects couldn’t be higher.
That’s especially true in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, where the VFX industry has been growing faster than a speeding bullet in markets like South Korea, Japan, China, India, and Thailand. In fact, according to last year’s Mordor Intelligence report, the APAC Animation, VFX, and Post Production Market size is estimated at 196.28 billion dollars in 2025 and is predicted to grow to an estimated 346.06 billion by 2030. The report points to rising content demand, government support and investment, cost-effective productions, and technological advancements all driving rapid growth in the APAC animation, VFX, and post-production market.
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It is not just governments looking to build post-production infrastructure to meet domestic and international demand, of course. Netflix, for one, has been reaping the rewards of spending time and money in the APAC region. Its revenue there has skyrocketed from 1.47 billion dollars in 2019 to more than doubling by 2023 to 3.76 billion, says the report. That explains why the streamer continues to make the APAC region a priority with original films and television production in Korea, Japan, and Thailand — ones which utilize VFX across the board.
On one end of the spectrum are, of course, genre productions that rely heavily on VFX in order to create a heightened or fantastical world. Just last week, Netflix announced it will produce a live-action version of the hugely popular Korean fantasy webtoon, “Solo Leveling,” with rising Korean star Byeon Woo-seok starring in the series about a world where dungeons open across a city and characters can level up into magical classes like RPG characters. “We will produce that show in real life, so there will be a lot of heavy VFX that will be needed,” says Sung Q. Lee, Netflix’s Head of Production, APAC, India.
While “Solo Leveling” falls within the popular isekai, or power fantasy, genre, the use cases are much broader. On the other end of the spectrum is Thailand-based limited drama series “Mad Unicorn,” a David and Goliath-themed story about an ambitious but poor entrepreneur named Santi (Ice Natara Nopparatayapon) who takes on a massive home delivery company. That show is more grounded in reality but benefits thematically from the way that it utilizes VFX to make the visual language of the show more expressive of the characters’ struggles and victories.
In the show’s fourth episode, Santi discovers a nefarious rival home delivery company has injected fake packages into his company’s workload to damage the upstart’s reputation. Realizing the deception and refusing to call defeat, Santi and his staff pile the boxes high in a parking lot and then set the cardboard tower on fire, an act that bonds the team to fight the villainous competitor. This triumphant moment is not only one of the emotional tentpoles in the series, but VFX helps to amplify the moment. “We set the first layer of the real fire, and then extra packages and the fire tower all the way up to the top is done with VFX,” explains Lee. Safety, of course, was a part of that decision, but it also shows that VFX growth isn’t genre-specific but leans into a stronger emotional experience for the audience.
And while there’s no argument that APAC’s VFX growth is a positive on programming and revenue levels, the question arises of who exactly is going to do the work in a field that requires a very specific skillset unable to be mastered by watching a few YouTube videos? Netflix had a solution. “We needed to work really hard to bring new people into the industry so that we also help its ecosystem,” Lee said.
In 2022, Netflix took the ambitious step to launch its VFX and Virtual Production Academy in Korea, a program that includes both an educational component in a classroom as well as an internship for on-the-job training.
While there is a variety of skills that come out of the Academy as well as one-off workshops and training sessions found in regions like Japan and Australia, Lee stressed the training is also aimed at niche jobs which require hands-on experience working with infrastructure that’s too costly to be mastered in the back of a garage. “We don’t see that specific training in other institutions for those unique jobs, and you cannot train yourself because you need to have hands-on experience,” Lee said.
One such niche job is the Pipeline TD (technical director), which was a dream job for Seoul native Ahyeon Cho. The TD’s responsibilities are not only about assisting in developing and maintaining software tools, but also supporting artists and general troubleshooting in using that software. However, Cho’s academic work in cinema and art on the college level didn’t provide her with a way to learn the skills she needed to get her foot in the door for a VFX job. An online community posting about Netflix’s academy piqued her interest.
“The program brief said that they would be offering three months of on-site, hands-on experience and also provide a lot of knowledge that leans into the field,” says Cho, who would go on to graduate in the Academy’s first class in 2022 and is currently employed in her dream job as a Pipeline TD at Eyeline Korea.
As for what the future holds in the VFX industry in the APAC region, a crystal ball may be necessary to provide an accurate picture since technology continues to evolve and the content appetite grows more and more voracious. That said, what seems obvious is that the importance of VFX from the summer blockbuster to the non-genre television project is here to stay, and we should continue to see the financial and entertainment rewards go up, up, and away.
