Chunghwa Telecom Slate: ‘Gunshot’ & ‘Call Of Lobster’ Lead Taiwan Push

Chunghwa Telecom has pulled the curtain back on a content-investment slate led by the eight-part police drama Gunshot and the cross-border action comedy Call Of Lobster. The twin announcements mark the telecom giant’s most aggressive move yet into original Taiwanese film and television.

Ground-Level Policing: How ‘Gunshot’ Turns Systemic Rot Into Serial Drama

Gunshot is already in production, with cameras rolling on a Taiwanese-language series built for PTS Taigi. S11 Partners and Third Culture Content are producing, putting the procedural on a working schedule rather than a development wishlist.

Kent Tsai anchors the ensemble as one of three officers whose competing definitions of justice collide inside a system that rewards visibility over virtue. It is a premise that trades on institutional friction rather than lone-wolf heroics.

The supporting bench gives the series its texture: Chan Tzu-Hsuan, Cheng Chih-Wei, Lu Hsiao-Fen, and Mark Lee round out a cast calibrated for generational range. That depth matters for an eight-part order, where character attrition across episodes is the real test of a drama’s staying power.

Eight episodes is a deliberate format choice, giving the showroom to build a slow-burn case rather than sprint through a single procedural arc. For a telco-backed production, that extended runway also means extended subscriber engagement.

Chang Chen, Choi Siwon And The Absurdist Gamble Of ‘Call Of Lobster’

Call Of Lobster arrives with a stranger pedigree: a cross-border action comedy loosely inspired by a Taiwanese lobster farmer who offered his services to the North Korean government. Yin Chen-hao directs for Calendar Studios, steering a premise that lives or dies on tonal control.

Chang Chen and Choi Siwon top the cast, a pairing that bridges Taiwanese arthouse credibility with Korean pop-culture reach. That cross-market chemistry is the film’s clearest commercial hook in a region where co-productions increasingly determine distribution reach.

Chunghwa Telecom boarded the project after it claimed the Chunghwa Telecom Award at Taiwan Creative Content Fest in 2024, and Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture has added its backing. The award-to-financing pipeline is now a working template for the company’s talent-scouting operation.

The film’s absurdist premise places it alongside contemporary genre experiments that test how far high-concept comedy can travel across borders. Whether the tone lands will decide its festival and streaming fortunes.

Golden Horse Momentum And The Telco-Fund Playbook

The slate does not arrive cold. Chunghwa Telecom’s earlier investments, Sabu’s Arrested Memory and Frank Cheng and Sheng-Jung Tang’s The Photo From 1977, together collected 12 nominations at the upcoming Golden Horse Awards.

That awards tally is the strongest argument the telco can make to its government partners and its own board. Chunghwa Telecom is one of three Taiwanese telecoms deploying state-partnered funds into film and television, and nomination counts are the currency of that arrangement.

For a telecom, content investment is a subscriber-retention instrument as much as a cultural statement. Exclusive originals give the platform a reason for customers to stay signed in, and awards buzz supplies the marketing that a pure carriage deal never could.

Both projects remain without announced release windows, with the company holding its distribution cards close ahead of a formal slate reveal. Track the rollout across our trade entertainment wire desk as dates and platform placements firm up.

The economics hinge on delivery discipline: Gunshot must clear post-production inside its PTS Taigi window, while Call Of Lobster carries the heavier burden of a theatrical-quality action comedy built on a modest regional budget. Every week of overrun on either title eats directly into the fund’s next-cycle capacity.

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Chief Reviewer

Ankit Jaiswal

Editorial Director - 7+ yrs

Ankit Jaiswal is the Chief Author, covering Indian cinema and OTT releases with honest, no-filler criticism. An SEO strategist by background, he brings a research-driven approach to film writing, cutting through hype to tell you exactly what's worth your time.