'Oasia' among the five Star Project finalists

The Korea Culture and Content Agency (KOCCA, CEO: Suh, Byung-Moon) announced officially on Aug. 14 on its website (http://www.kocca.kr) its final selection for this year's Star Project.

The selected projects are four animations?Oasis (Tuba Entertainment), Lamimila (Characterplan), Elephant Hunter (Heewon Entertainment), Tea Five (Kocaban)?and Bao Bao (Yeowoobee Company).

The only musical selected for the star project this year, Bao Bao, is a grand-scale family musical co-produced by Korea and China staged to celebrate the friendship between the two countries, which has already been approved by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Korea as an official event for the Korea and China friendship anniversary. Based on a comic series of the same title, which had also been jointly produced by the two countries, Bao Bao is to be made as an animation and character goods, showing a successful OSMU model. Produced by Yeowoobee Company in Korea and the Beijing Children's Art Company in China, the musical has recently made its successful premiere in Beijing, China.

Having already earned various prestigious awards both in Korean and abroad, including an award at the final selection of the DIGICON Animation Competition in Japan, Oasia had been chosen as an excellent pilot project by KOCCA in 2005. Moreover, Oasia's broadcasting on KBS (Korea), Nickelodeon (UK), and TF1 (France) has also been confirmed.

These selected projects either have already been distributed to foreign markets or attracted a considerable amount of investment or have proven their quality as their contents have been exported to foreign markets.

The Star Project Program is being implemented to discover and support export-oriented projects in five categories (Animation/Character/Comics/Music/Performance), and KOCCA will support these selected projects with up to 35% of the total production costs or up to KRW 1 billion per project, as well as provide them marketing, foreign distribution channels and manpower support.

The Source : Koreacontent News Team

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