‘Beef’ Creator Lee Sung Jin Launches Lila Pictures, Developing Two Series For Netflix Including ‘The Only Child’ Limited Series With Ali Wong

Six months after re-upping his overall deal with Netflix, Beef creator Lee Sung Jin has formed a new production company and has set two projects in development with the streamer.

Lee has launched Lila Pictures and has hired Hyunji Ward as SVP of Film and Television. Ward began her career at UTA in the motion picture department and has spent the last four years as a creative director at Dakota Johnson’s TeaTime Pictures, where she produced Splitsville, which premiered last year in Cannes, Christy Hall’s Daddio and Zoe Lister-Jones series Slip.

The company will focus on developing original projects across film and television for Lee Sung Jin to create, executive produce, write and direct, while also investing in new voices.

As part of this move, he is developing two projects with Netflix.

The Only Child is a limited series that reunites him with Beef star Ali Wong. The series, which Wong will star in and produce, sees her playing the mother of a professional archer preparing to compete for her first gold medal.

Citizen’s Arrest is a drama series created by Gene Hong, a producer on Beef, who also exec produced series including Magnum P.I. The series follows two longtime friends and neighbors whose obsession with solving a local crime becomes an escape from the private crises neither is ready to face.

This all comes as there could also be more Beef down the line. The second season of the anthology series starred Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan launched in April.

Elsewhere, Lee recently wrote X-Men for Marvel with Joanna Calo and recently exec produced Alex Russell’s Lurker, which premiered at Sundance.

Lee Sung Jin said, “I’m excited to launch Lila Pictures with the support of my creative home at Netflix and the help of Hyunji Ward, our new SVP of Film and TV. In Sanskrit, lila can be interpreted as ‘the divine play,’ and I’m grateful to reflect that through film and television, alongside close friends and collaborators like Ali Wong and Gene Hong. This is just the beginning. There will also be merch.”