EXCLUSIVE: DEI isn’t DOA in Hollywood. Just take a look at what’s trending on streaming right now.
A slew of Asian American-led TV series and films are dominating the summer airwaves, even as studios dismantle many of their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, raising questions about their ongoing commitment to representing the real world on both the big and small screens.
Look no further than the trio of shows currently leading Prime Video‘s Top 10 TV list: the Maggie Q-led Ballard, Butterfly, starring Daniel Dae Kim, and the YA hit The Summer I Turned Pretty, created by Jenny Han and starring Lola Tung.
Per Nielsen’s most recent Media Distributor Gauge report, Amazon captured 3.9% of all TV viewing in July thanks to the early success of both Ballard and The Summer I Turned Pretty. The Bosch spinoff, which debuted on July 9, generated 2.5B minutes viewed in the U.S. over the course of the month. Meanwhile, Han’s YA adaptation of her novel of the same name put up 1.5B minutes of U.S. viewership last month, thanks to the July 16 return for the third and final season.
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This positioned Amazon within a stone’s throw of its platform-best share of 4%, which was set in December 2024. The streamer has steadily grown its share of TV viewing over the last four years, increasing by 62% since July 2021.
These current successes are the result of a long-term vision for the service’s future, Vernon Sanders, Head of TV at Prime Video, told Deadline.
“When you try to force something, sometimes you don’t get the results you’re looking for. So we’ve been at this a while,” Sanders explained. “Albert Chang and I used to be co-Heads of TV together, and it was something we talked a lot about a lot back in the days, about how we find organic ways to tell stories that would resonate all around the world? Because we do have a global audience, and we are passionate about making sure that we’re telling stories that really cover the globe and cover the spectrum of people across the world.”
He added, “This is really confirmation that the breadth of our content [and] how we’re approaching storytelling is really working…They’re stories that take place all around the world, but what connects them is their universality and, in some cases, they’re stories told from perspectives we don’t often see.”
Both Ballard and The Summer I Turned Pretty help counter the suggestion by some that female-led programming doesn’t attract a large audience on TV. Additionally, the popularity of these shows reveals that Asian leads have the power to enthrall viewers when telling stories where the characters’ race is not a factor.
“I just hope that Hollywood continues to hire the best people for their leading roles. In this case, it happens to be three Asian leads having success, and that’s wonderful. It’s come a long way since I started in the business. People want to be entertained, and you can be any race to do that,” Maggie Q told Deadline.
The actress, born Margaret Denise Quigley, has played badass leading women throughout her career, including the titular rogue assassin in the CW’s Nikita and FBI Agent Hannah Wells in the ABC/Netflix political drama, Designated Survivor, to name a few. She was born and raised in Hawaii and is of Vietnamese descent on her mother’s side, as well as having Polish and Irish ancestry on her father’s side, who is American.
Inspired by the work of bestselling author Michael Connelly, Ballard follows Detective Renée Ballard (Q) as she leads the LAPD’s new and underfunded cold case division, tackling the city’s most challenging long-forgotten crimes. As she peels back layers of crimes spanning decades, including a serial killer’s string of murders and a murdered John Doe, she soon uncovers a dangerous conspiracy within the LAPD. With the help of her volunteer team and retired detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver), Detective Ballard navigates personal trauma, professional challenges, and life-threatening dangers to expose the truth.
Casting director Julia Kim, who is Korean-American, concurs with Q.
“I believe that leading roles are cast to try to reflect the world around us accurately. And these parts aren’t always ethnically specific, which has allowed Asian women to compete on a playing field where their individual skills, charisma, and confidence can shine,” she said.
“Culturally, acting is now considered more of a realistic career choice for Asians, and this has led to all kinds of very capable women entering the field. And with more Asian women gaining experience in indie films, on TV, and in more minor movie roles, a new batch of formidable (potential) leading ladies has been launched upon the industry,” Julia Kim added.
Julia Kim’s credits include a variety of hit projects, including the critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film Minari, which tells the story of a family of South Korean immigrants who move to a rural town in Arkansas in the 1980s, and most recently, Prime Video’s Butterfly.
Of Daniel Dae Kim’s casting, in Butterfly, she noted, “What makes Daniel so ideal for the role of David Jung is he’s both charismatic and believable. Believable as a father. Believable as a spy and as an action star. In real life, as well as on screen, Daniel is authentic, which helps make him relatable, and not just to other Asians. He has been acting for a long time and is a consummate pro. He’s paid his dues – excelling in small parts before standing out in the supporting roles that ultimately lead to his leading man status.”
Julia Kim was also one of the casting directors for the splashiest film of the summer, Kpop Demon Hunters, which features Daniel Dae Kim voicing one of the main characters alongside Ji-young Yoo, May Hong, and Arden Cho.
While Prime Video’s TV rankings offer a clear example of the strength in diverse storytelling, the success of those titles isn’t happening in a bubble. Netflix’s Kpop Demon Hunters has also been the talk of the town this summer, recently becoming the streamer’s most popular film of all time. The animated musical has seen virtually 0% audience decline for the past three consecutive weeks, becoming so popular that Netflix caved on a theatrical release, putting a singalong version in 1,700 theaters nationwide over the weekend. That delivered a massive win for the streaming service as Kpop beat out Weapons for No. 1 at the box office with $19M.
Another female-led phenom, the film also currently boasts four songs in the Top 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 list — the first time that has happened for any soundtrack album in the history of the rankings. HUNTR/X and the Saja Boys, the two rival K-pop groups in the film, are now among the highest charting K-pop groups ever in the U.S., with the former becoming the first K-pop group to hit #1 on the Global Apple Music charts with their song “Golden.”
“In Kpop Demon Hunters, Daniel is the voice of Healer Han, the quirky doctor who tries to help Rumi when she loses her voice,” Julia Kim said. “For situations like this, Daniel is as experienced at conveying empathy and humor through his voice as he is when he’s on screen. Here, his standing as one of the leading actors – and cultural voices of the Korean-American community made him an ideal addition to the film as the team looked to round out the cast.”
Speaking of Butterfly, sources also indicate that preliminary data for the August 15 released series is looking promising. The show had a relatively strong opening week and is likely to appear in Nielsen’s Top 10 report for that period when it becomes available next month.
The Daniel Dae Kim-starrer, which he also executive-produced, is a graphic novel adaptation of a spy thriller featuring a story with universal appeal that resonates with people from diverse backgrounds.
Co-created by Ken Woodruff and novelist Steph Cha, Butterfly explores the intricate family dynamics within the treacherous world of global espionage. The show centers on David Jung (Daniel Dae Kim), an enigmatic and highly unpredictable former U.S. intelligence operative living in South Korea, whose life is shattered when the consequences of an impossible decision from his past come back to haunt him.
The recurring cast also boasts additional major talent from South Korea, including Park Hae-soo, who was also a featured player in Season 1 of Netflix’s smash hit series Squid Game, Kim Tae-hee, and Kim Ji-hoon, who also starred in the Ana de Armas action flick Ballerina.
“I really like that all our shows reflect on an American experience through an Asian American lens. Whether they’re set in Korea or the US, I think we provide a unique perspective and authenticity that can only come from our lived experiences,” Daniel Dae Kim told Deadline from South Korea, where he continues promoting Butterfly and Kpop Demon Hunters.
Daniel Dae Kim is a Tony-nominated actor best known for his roles in ABC’s Lost, the CBS police procedural Hawaii Five-0, and for playing Fire Lord Ozai in Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, among many other popular titles. He also starred in and executive produced the ABC medical drama The Good Doctor, which ran for seven seasons.
He is revered by his fellow Asians in Hollywood for his tireless efforts to shine a light on the excellent work and talent within the community, as well as by other diverse communities, whom he also supports by highlighting the importance of authenticity and representation. He most recently spoke about supporting free speech and DEI efforts at a critical time in the United States, as the current administration has made every effort to eliminate and or limit both.
As for The Summer I Turned Pretty, the series’ popularity, especially among young women, has been well-demonstrated. Season 3 garnered a whopping 25 million global viewers in its first seven days post-premiere.
“We had a big gap between Season 2 and Season 3, and we were a little nervous about whether we would end up seeing a dip in [viewership],” Sanders admitted. Instead, he says the response to the third and final season has been “quite the opposite.”
Based on the best-selling book trilogy from Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty is a multigenerational drama that hinges on a love triangle between one girl, Belly (Tung), and two brothers, Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno), the ever-evolving relationship between mothers and their children, and the enduring power of strong female friendship. It is a coming-of-age story about first love, first heartbreak, and the magic of that one perfect summer.
The series is a success, at least in part, because Prime Video has maintained a close relationship with Han. Coming off the massively popular To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy at Netflix, Han brought her knack for telling stories through the female gaze to Amazon, where series viewership for The Summer I Turned Pretty has tripled in the seven-day window over the course of three seasons.
“There has been just a massive explosion of people coming into the service,” he said, indicating that the series is not only attracting a huge fraction of current Prime Video subscribers but also has been a significant acquisition driver as well.
TSITP is a juggernaut among women, especially, but Amazon is not only relying on YA content to attract that audience. Instead, Amazon has adopted a broader strategy to target women across various genres — and it is paying off.
In fact, Ballard and Butterfly are also over-indexing among women, which Sanders attributes to a targeted campaign aimed at developing and spotlighting more female-led titles across genres. More recent offerings from the service that address this point include The Better Sister, Another Simple Favor, We Were Liars, Maxton Hall, Motorheads, Culpa Nuestra, Overcompensating, and The Map That Leads to You.
Sources tell Deadline that, through its first five days, half of Butterfly’s U.S. audience was women. There’s no reason to believe this trend won’t continue as the series matures. Ballard, for example, has seen a U.S. audience that is about 53% women through 28 days post-premiere.
“Members of the Asian diaspora are a very large global community that has been consistently supporting commercially and critically successful entertainment across all platforms — Crazy Rich Asians, Shang-Chi, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Minari, Beef, Parasite, Didi, KPop Demon Hunters –just to name a recent few,” Phillip Sun, founder and president of M88, explained. “I applaud our partners at Amazon for their continued global vision and our allies across the industry who continue to understand the value of multicultural storytelling for all communities.”
What’s interesting is that these series are intriguing to very different age demos. As Prime Video previously reported, The Summer I Turned Pretty is the top show currently among women 18-34 in the U.S. Ballard, on the other hand, is resonating with older women. The series is Prime Video’s third-highest-reaching season of the year so far for U.S. women 35+.
The success of shows like the trio specified here, in conjunction with Netflix’s Squid Games, FX’s Shogun, and Apple’s Pachinko, as well as the newly renewed Deli Boys from Hulu and Onyx Collective, and the Jason Momoa-led Chief of War, currently airing its first season on Apple TV+, among many others, suggests there is in fact a strong appetite for diverse stories.
On the film side, the streamer has also found recent success with the Amazon MGM Studios Ilya Naishuller-directed action movie Heads of State, starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas, who is South East Asian as a native of India, and Prime Video’s action film Red One starring Dwayne Johnson, who is of mixed African-Canadian and Samoan heritage.
“To use what’s happening at Amazon as just one example, the success of our shows is proof positive that DEI is not charity, far from it. The easy knock against DEI is that it somehow rewards those who are undeserving. Still, one look at the esteemed careers of both Jenny and Maggie proves that providing talented AAPI artists with the right opportunities ultimately makes good business sense,” Daniel Dae Kim said.
For the members of the AAPI community in Hollywood, including actors, creators, storytellers, artists, and everyone who plays a role above and below the line and beyond, especially during these financially conservative times in the entertainment industry, Daniel Dae Kim has a message for you.
“No matter which direction the political winds may blow, our work remains the same: to be the best at what we choose to do. Whether it’s classes, interning, assisting, take care of the things within your control so that no one can ever call us undeserving. And if you really believe that we are a community, then we are made stronger by your contribution and advocacy,” he said.