He Made ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty.’ Now Paul Lee’s Betting on K-Drama
Wiip’s CEO hints at more from his Amazon smash, and talks his relationship with former owner CAA and where the market is moving
I cover TV from L.A. I talked to Sony TV chief Katherine Pope, wrote about USA Network’s return to scripted originals and interviewed the directors of Netflix’s megahit KPop Demon Hunters. I’m at lesley.goldberg@theankler.com
The massive global success of KPop Demon Hunters is rippling way beyond Netflix. In fact, Wiip CEO Paul Lee is hoping the breakout phenom will even help open the door for his indie production company to enter the animation space. The former ABC entertainment president, a Brit who earlier in his career launched BBC’s cable net BBC America, is working with Wiip’s majority owner, the South Korean production and management company SLL (formerly known as JTBC), to adapt Korean drama Strong Girl Bong-soon as an animated series for U.S. audiences.
The original K-drama aired in 2017 and revolves around a woman with superhuman strength (Park Bo-young, who’s won multiple Korean awards for the role); it grew into a larger franchise with the 2023 spinoff Strong Girl Nam-soon (starring Lee Yoo-mi). The hope at Wiip is to ignite a bidding war once the project is formally shopped to buyers after the Labor Day holiday as Lee plots his company’s broader expansion into animation, feature films, unscripted and documentary fare.
A decade removed from his tenure running Disney’s broadcast network ABC, where he ushered in a new era of diversity in television with hits like Kenya Barris’ Black-ish and Shonda Rhimes’ Kerry Washington vehicle Scandal, Lee now oversees a team of 30 out of Wiip’s Sunset Boulevard offices in the heart of Los Angeles. He launched the company in 2018 with backing from CAA as the agency packaged its clients into such TV hits as HBO’s limited series Mare of Easttown and Amazon’s The Summer I Turned Pretty. (Based on author Jenny Han’s 2013 three-part book series, Summer got a straight-to-series order in 2021 and has been a hit on Prime Video as it finishes its third and final season.)
After a two-year battle with the Writers Guild of America over the practice of packaging (whereby agencies were paid hefty fees for putting together a show with writers, actors and directors from their rosters and often serving as the studio on those projects), CAA was forced to step down its stake in the production company, selling the majority of Wiip and retaining a 20 percent interest.
Now, with Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby’s follow-up, the Mark Ruffalo starrer Task, premiering Sept. 7 on HBO as The Summer I Turned Pretty wraps on Sept. 17, the taciturn Lee joins me for a rare interview. On our agenda: how the end of packaging fees impacted Wiip, the future for Summer (it sounds like there could be one) and why the time is right for a series like Strong Girl.
From my conversation with Lee, lightly edited, paid subscribers will learn:
How Wiip clawed back after the bruising WGA–agency battle
Why Lee says a “mixed economy” is the future of Hollywood
The surprising way today’s TV landscape echoes broadcast’s heyday
Lee’s candid take on M&A prospects for indie producers
Inside Wiip’s expanding slate — including shows still under wraps
How global series (and Korean ownership) are shaping Wiip’s playbook
The number of TV buyers Lee thinks will survive the next five years
Why he says he sleeps “a lot better than I ever did at ABC”
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