Alex Barker at the FT[££] is reporting on the tide of investment in local content that SVOD is generating.
in 2020, more than 60% of Netflix’s exclusive TV/films were made outside the English-speaking world and recent research has more than 1/3rd of all Netflix and Amazon commissions have been in languages other than English. The SVOD newcomer Disney Plus also has plans to invest heavily in European production.
In the past, Europe’s audiovisual industry has been largely bankrolled either by the state or investment quotas that cause public service broadcasters to invest in new content (more posts on this here).
Will this new settlement result in loads of refreshing cultural innovation, or will it be click-friendly mid-atlantic pap – as Alex says, “formulaic, placeless and bland.”
Meanwhile, the European Audiovisual Observatory reports that European productions (and they treat the UK as ‘European’) are making a lot of headway into US markets while challenging ‘imports’ (and these are usually dominated by ‘US imports’….):
- In 2019, admissions to European non-national films decreased by 8% in Europe, while increasing in extra-European markets.
- The growth in admissions to European export films was the result of a jump in admissions to European films in the US which confirmed its position as the largest export market for European films.
- Germany and France were the top export markets for European films in Europe, generating respectively 12.2 million and 11.6 million admissions to non-national European films.
- In 2019 UK films dominated European film exports, accounting for 13% of European film exports on release and 44% of total non-national admissions to European films worldwide.
So, even if the cultural quality isn’t always the winner here UK film plc is doing very well.