The domestic film market is one of the industries hardest hit during the coronavirus pandemic. As movie theater operations were restricted due to social distancing, the number of audiences decreased significantly, and large movie theaters closed one after another. Even after COVID-19 ended, the situation did not change much. With the expansion of the OTT platform market, the movie distribution structure that centered around theaters was destroyed, and people were able to watch movies without having to go to the theater. In fact, according to data released by the Korean Film Council, the total number of theater audiences last year was 125 million, which was only 55.2% of 2019 before COVID-19.

RNR, a company that has been responsible for installing and operating multiplexes at home and abroad, has begun a new challenge in response to this crisis in the film market. It is a monoplex business that combines only the advantages of multiplex and OTT platforms. Monoplexes provide the same experience of watching a movie in a large theater in a smaller venue. It is attracting attention as an innovation that breaks the mold of the existing film industry in that it does not build a large movie theater and tell customers to ‘go to the movie theater to watch a released film,’ but rather ‘distribute movies to the location of the customer’s choice.’ I met R&R CEO Seok Min-cheol in person and heard his story.

Please introduce your company

RNR is a content tech company comprised of Hollywood film distribution experts and Korea’s top screening industry experts. Our Monoplex business provides consumers with a cinematic experience that cannot be satisfied simply by watching OTT on a mobile phone.

The CEO himself has been working in the film industry for over 20 years. I started working at a time when the Korean film industry was beginning to industrialize with large corporations moving out of Chungmuro, and I was able to see the overall aspect of the industry. In particular, at a time when the infrastructure of the film industry was changing from film to digital, I traveled to Hollywood for a week every month as a practitioner of the digital cinema transition and prepared for the digital transition with the headquarters of the six major Hollywood studios at the time. Thanks to this, I gained a macroscopic perspective to see the direction of change in the entire industry, and I am sequentially proceeding with the projects I anticipated while preparing for digital cinema at the time. We can be confident that we have differentiated expertise as we prepared and executed the business based on a comprehensive understanding of the industry by understanding the screening industry, the distribution industry, and the first-run film screening system encompassing hardware and software. .

Please introduce your main business

Since our founding, we have been planning and implementing three major stages of expansion of our business portfolio. The first stage is to supply video and audio hardware specialized for Hollywood standards, mainly targeting multiplexes. The second stage is to develop a monoplex business that transforms the existing heavy-duty facility equipment industry represented by multiplexes into an asset-light content distribution industry by combining movie distribution and content transmission solution software on that foundation. Lastly, the third stage is a content marketplace that enables everything from movie release to IP management and IP fragment trading based on the globally formed monoplex content distribution network.

We are currently in the process of expanding to Phase 2 beyond Phase 1, and our achievements so far include designing, supplying, operating, and maintaining more than 2,500 screens over 8 years for multiplexes in Korea, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Myanmar. Provides services andBecame Asia's No. 1 operator in the NEMA industry.

Our company plans to link the 1st stage forward business and the 3rd stage backward business, focusing on the digital content distribution business. Phase 1 has already become the No. 1 operator in Asia, and Phase 2 monoplex business, which is currently in progress, is a model that we are implementing for the first time in the world. Based on the business network we have built so far, we are pursuing overwhelming first place through rapid execution with major partners. there is. The third stage, IP fragment trading business, is aiming for commercialization in the first half of 2026.

If you have any future goals

Monoplex, R&R's second-stage growth model, will begin global expansion starting with the U.S. market this year. We have secured content by completing discussions with the headquarters of all major Hollywood studios, and are preparing to select locations and sign contracts with a number of partners entering the U.S.

Our ultimate goal is to create a new content ecosystem. Disney, which is considered the most successful company in the content industry, is actually an old system created a long time ago, and the content creation-consumption ecosystem is changing significantly. A service called OTT, which did not exist even 10 years ago, was created, and after COVID-19, the global box office decreased by 70%. It seemed as if a world unique to OTT had arrived, but after about two years, when OTT's growth reached its limit, the stock price of Netflix, the leading company, plummeted 70%. Ultimately, no single content distribution platform, whether online or offline, can monopolize consumers' time. Now, a new ecosystem will be created where online and offline coexist, and it will be a form of interaction with the fandom economy rather than unilaterally delivering content.

As a wise man said, in the past, big fish ate small fish, but now we are in an era where fast fish eat slow fish. We plan to quickly develop our business in this changing ecosystem and become a new Disney in a different way from Disney.

Copyright © Economic News Unauthorized reproduction and redistribution prohibited