Challenges in Global Film and TV Releases
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.
If you’re one of the approximately 460,000 production companies on the IMDB Pro active COMPANYmeter looking to release a title that will attract an audience among the world’s 7.7 billion people living in 200+ countries and territories, then you have your work cut out for you. Besides having to write a well-told, engaging story, you must decide where among the world’s 300+ streaming platforms and 25,000+ linear channels to release it.
At a high level, it seems pretty easy to narrow it down. “All” you have to do is identify the most lucrative markets, see what languages they speak, and target them, right? Toss in some subtitles and dubbing, and everything’s good.
If only it were that simple.
Choosing Is Easy-ish
According to the latest estimates, the most spoken languages in the world are English (1.5B), Chinese (1.1B), and Hindi (592M). That doesn’t include the other 2B people who speak Spanish, Arabic, Russian, French, German, and Japanese, among all the rest of them. While those are not the “most spoken,” each of those six languages is spoken in the top ten movie markets worldwide.
Table 1 Most Spoken Languages in the World, Ethnologue
Choosing your target countries and languages is just the beginning. If your title is to be successful, the path forward is evident. Although audiences may understand the language, regional and societal differences may change their understanding of the story. You have to ensure your story is appropriately translated using cultural references that the audience understands and that it complies with local regulations.
No Title Is Immune From Censorship or Criticism
Getting this wrong has serious consequences. For example, eight out of ten of 2022’s most successful titles at the box office were banned in several of the world's largest markets for cultural issues. Each of the last seven Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) titles was banned in China and the Middle East for the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters. The Netflix series “Squid Game” received much criticism for mistranslations, inaccurate subtitles, and dubs that left out some of the most important cultural aspects of the series. Most of the flak came from audience members!
The best way to approach this challenge is to determine, as far advance as possible, using the best data, which markets most clearly align with your content. Doing so allows you to target them in a way that reduces title and brand risk, minimizes post-production costs, and speeds time to market.
A Cultural Playbook
Over the past decade, Spherex has worked to develop the IP and technologies necessary to provide the tools the media and entertainment (M&E) industry needs to make informed content and compliance decisions that impact markets and revenue. The company has reviewed thousands of policy manuals, jurisdictional film and TV ratings classifications, legal decisions, and public consumer complaints to create the industry’s first cultural playbook. The result is a proprietary capability that detects and analyzes approximately 1,000 scene attributes across 8.3 million combinations that impact ratings in nearly every market worldwide.
This playbook provides unmatched intelligence and specific guidance that can be applied to any form of video content, from film to television shows to video games. No other platform comes close to providing the accuracy and depth of Spherex AI. From a single review of any title, it gives both a customized and highly specific roadmap for localizing and culturalizing any title and delivering valid age ratings for any country or territory where release is desired.
If you’re interested in learning more, Spherex AI/ML technology is discussed in the October 2022 edition of “Reteller Magazine.” We encourage you to check it out!
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