Filmmakers trapped in Hooq’s nightmarish liquidation: Show us the money

Candice Lee also worked on this story.

On March 27, 2020, Singaporean filmmaker Haresh Tilani received a text from a friend saying, “Hooq is liquidating. Did you know that?”

Tilani, who had just completed work on a hefty eight-episode series for the video-streaming platform, was unfazed. He replied: “But they haven’t paid us a shitload of money. They have to pay because there’s a contract. [And] it’s a company backed by Singtel. We’re not gonna get screwed over by them, right?”

He quickly learned that he could.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Tilani is a co-founder and the creative director of Ministry of Funny (MOF), one of the production houses and filmmakers across Asia that were commissioned by Hooq – a joint venture of heavyweights Singtel, Warner Bros., and Sony Pictures – from 2018 to 2019 to make original content.

Productions came to an abrupt halt when the liquidation of Singapore-headquartered Hooq was announced in March 2020.

It’s been three years since and creditors like Haresh claim they still haven’t recovered the money they spent to produce the TV series.

Hooq’s liquidation was expected to complete in late 2022 but that hasn’t happened. Four Singapore-based production houses tell Tech in Asia that they haven’t received any word about the liquidation’s progress, either.

Instead, Tilani says they were “tossed around like a hot potato.”

“We would jump on hour-long calls, talk about next steps, but a lot of things we’ve heard were along the lines of ‘That’s business and it’s always a risk. It’s an unfortunate thing that happens and it’s best that you guys figure out your next steps,’” he explains.

Besides the four production firms in Singapore that have been left hanging without payments, several others in Asia are in the same boat.

The content creators were made to sign a contract with Hooq Mauritius, a subsidiary of Hooq Singapore. Since the former falls under the jurisdiction of Mauritius, a separate liquidator was appointed in July 2020.

The deadline has been extended at least three times ever since. While Hooq Mauritius’ liquidation was dated to end in September 2020, the last deadline communicated was November 2022, according to emails seen by Tech in Asia.

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