Horror Emerges as Common Ground for Taiwan and Indonesia's Film Makers

Horror is the natural meeting point for Taiwanese and Indonesian producers, according to a K7 Media study of Indonesia's film and TV market. Trang Nguyen presented the research at Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) in Taipei, and the study points to scary films as the easiest bridge between the two countries.

The numbers behind that case are large. Indonesia's box office took $352.9 million in 2025, according to the study. That is 1.6 times the size of Vietnam's box office and five times Thailand's. The market has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 5.1%, meaning its yearly growth averaged that figure over the period, compared with a 4.3% average for Asia-Pacific.

Local films do most of the work. Indonesian titles made up 201 releases in 2025, or 43% of the year's total, and won 64% of admissions, with 82.6 million tickets sold. By comparison, 100 U.S. releases drew 36.9 million admissions in Indonesia. Japanese films were smaller in number, with 27 titles drawing 3.3 million admissions. Korean and Chinese films did better than their release counts suggest only in some cases: 61 Korean titles and 16 Chinese titles each drew around 2 million admissions.

Horror sits at the centre of the local hits. Five of the 10 most-attended Indonesian films since 2011 are horror films, the study found. Some of the biggest examples are remakes or adaptations of films from other countries. The Indonesian version of the Korean film Miracle in Cell No. 7 sold around 5.8 million tickets in 2022, and it led to a sequel and an animated spin-off. Kang Mak from Pee Mak, an Indonesian take on the Thai horror-comedy Pee Mak, drew around 4.9 million admissions in 2024.

The Taiwan link is already in place. The TCCF presentation singled out The Rope Curse 4 as a recent collaboration between the two countries. Television is moving across borders too. An Indonesian big-screen version of the 2016 Korean series Descendants of the Sun is in production for cinemas in 2027.

The streaming side of the market is also growing. Vidio, launched in 2014, is Indonesia's largest streaming platform by cumulative reach as of 2026, according to Variety's report on the study. Netflix made its first Indonesian original, The Cigarette Girl, in 2023. Disney+ arrived in Indonesia in 2020 as Disney+ Hotstar, was rebranded in October 2025, and in October 2026 signed a joint-package deal with Vidio. A joint package is a bundle, where two services are sold together to the same customer.

For viewers, the picture is simple. Indonesian audiences have been filling cinemas for local films, and many of the biggest of those films borrow stories from abroad. For producers in Taipei and Jakarta, the study suggests horror is where the two markets are most likely to meet first.