Kazakhstan’s JKS Entertainment & 1ON Studios partner for TikTok star-led YA drama

Target

Kazakhstan-based JKS Entertainment and 1ON Studios have partnered to co-produce Target, a new YA mystery drama series featuring leading local TikTok stars.

The 8 x 30-minute series follows the story of high school senior Mark and his friends, who attend Alma, an elite private school. When Mark first starts receiving mysterious targeted messages on his social media feed, he doesn’t pay much attention. But when the messages describe events that begin to happen in real life, he takes them much more seriously.

When he receives a “target” predicting that a life-threatening fire will break out at the school, he realizes he must act. Having managed to convince his peers that the danger is real, they set out to prevent a catastrophe.

The show features an ensemble cast of TikTok bloggers, from YOLO House and BIP House, including Lunamccall and Raidess together with Homm9k, who boasts 43.3 million TikTok followers.

Filming started in Almaty on 4 and will be completed by the mid-fall 2022. The series will be in English with a second season already in development, and global rights are currently available.

Beksultan Kazybek from JKS Entertainment, said: “I’ve long had a dream to create competitively cool content with our Tik Tokers as I wanted to show that they can be actors, too. Tik Tok is made up of billions, but only few make it to the global arena. It’s all about charisma, the inner energy that we are pleased to share.

“We’ve also prepared surprises for our fans: the most “shipped” couples who are loved by the audiences, will develop romantic relationships in the show as their characters progress.”

1ON Studios’ Temirlan Ataulla and Oleg Dyo, added: “It was obvious that sooner or later an international scripted series with Kazakhs Tik Tokers and talents would be made. There was a desire to collect the best representatives of the industry.

“The TikTok stars are the new media elite. You have to agree, making a story about a school played by high school idols is a pretty appealing idea. Our mission is to create a special, comfortable space to work together with international crews and talents, and to develop content that will resonate in global markets”.