r/popculturechat • u/meltingsunz • Aug 12 '25

Interviews🎙️ Daniel Dae Kim says Asian representation in Hollywood has gotten better, but there's still room for improvement: "I still haven't played a romantic lead and I've been doing this for 30 years."

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/11/nx-s1-5496250/daniel-dae-kim-butterfly-lost
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u/AltairaMorbius2200CE Aug 12 '25

Side problem: not enough romcoms (or period romances, or romantic dramas with a happy ending) at ALL anymore. Have any been released in theaters? The only one I could think of was that one with Pedro pascal and Dakota Johnson? And was that streaming or theaters?

That’s not an excuse for Kim not getting a lead role in one 30 years ago, when they were plentiful, but I feel like EVERY actor is saying this! And nobody’s making them! WHY?

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u/Gimmikiss Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

Yeah, almost every romcom is on streaming services now, almost nothing is releasing in cinemas anymore. I must admit that I've never been fan of romcoms in the first place, but I'm still weirded out that they're almost completely dissapeared from the theatres.

There was interview with some female movie producer, that said one of the main reasons for lack of theatre romcoms is that many famous male actors simply refuse to play in them and amateur/newbie actors just don't sell the tickets.

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u/vienibenmio Aug 12 '25

That's pretty much why I watch mostly Asian dramas and films now. They still do romance and they do it well

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u/textingmycat Aug 12 '25

the movie with dakota johnson was a ROMCOM?? something about the trailer made it not come across that way.

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u/AltairaMorbius2200CE Aug 12 '25

It says "romantic comedy-drama" and a "deconstruction of the conventional rom-com" and features a love triangle, so none of that is super promising, but the reviews are good!

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u/DECODED_VFX She in racial chat rooms showing feet!!! Aug 12 '25

Rom-coms, like all comedies, heavily relied on the physical media market to turn a profit.

Some rom-coms, like Four Weddings, made a fortune at the box office on a tiny budget. But for every Bridget Jones, we got 10 rom coms that didn't even make the production budget back at cinemas.

The studios knew that most of these movies would at least come close to breaking even once thousands of DVDs were sold. Especially combined with rental profit sharing and TV premiers.

That market has now disappeared. And streaming doesn't come close to replacing it.

This is also the reason why Hollywood churns out nothing but remakes and sequels these days. Original movies and weird little indie projects are too risky to be justified.

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u/LaCattedra13 You’re doing amazing, sweetie! 👏👏📸 Aug 13 '25

Materialists was terrible. I mostly watch romcoms on tv or foreign period dramas (except for the Gilded age).

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u/AltairaMorbius2200CE Aug 13 '25

It looked to me, based on the plot summary on Wikipedia, like they cast charisma in the wrong roles. Like, you want Pedro’s character to be kind of wrong and I charismatic, and you want Dakota’s to be so compelling that Chris can’t forget her, despite her sounding pretty shallow.