NEW YORK, January 24 – The success of the French crime series “Lupine” on Netflix, riding on the heels of the famous Spanish show “Money Heist,” may be noted, with US dominance on the small screen diminishing as a European ambition, Latin America. and South Korean players knocking on doors on streaming platforms.
“Ten years ago, there was 90 percent creativity in the United States,” said Pascal Breton, founder and head of production company Federation Entertainment. “Some locals were good, but he didn’t travel.”
But the rise in internet speed, the rise of on-demand television and the example set by American pay channels, led by HBO, have been pushing their peers abroad to bet on TV shows. , having relied heavily on cinema and sports in the past.
“Spiral,” (originally “Engrenages”), “Carlos”, or “Braquo,” all of which were made for Canal +, a growing global desire for non-anglophone TV productions and series.
This was followed by performances from public channels such as the Danish political philosophy 2010-13 “Borgen” and, from 2010, the British “Sherlock” which, although made in English, had a distinct non-American flavor.
Luca Barra, from the University of Bologna and co-author of a study on European television shows, said that improved standards driven by pay TV stations were trying to differentiate between public service broadcasters by coming up with the kind of high quality content that you just never used. see on the big screen.
Channels, he said, noted that their high yields were “not just a distinctive feature in all national markets, but also something that was attractive in other markets.”
This “change of mindset” has also favored the development of transnational production companies such as Federation Entertainment – particularly in Europe – to cope with growing budgets, he said.
At the same time, the explosion in the number of channels and platforms has built a desire for unprecedented content, while at the same time redefining the notion of success.
“Something that was seen 10 years ago is now easily a failure to succeed,” said Barra.
The emergence of international platforms, mostly Netflix but also more recently Amazon and Disney +, has played a key role in driving this desire for content.
Strengthening its international appeal, Netflix has also made subtitles available for all productions and blackouts for many of them, allowing a non-English series such as “Lupine” to be at the top global view.
Rebalancing
To capture overseas, U.S. platforms made local content in a number of countries, through production houses based there. In South Korea, and now in Europe, internet-based video-on-demand services also need to invest in the audio-visual sector in the country where they are based.
In this new view of television production, Americans are “still very powerful”, recognizing Britishness, but “there is a real rebalancing,” which he intended to accelerate.
The Cheyenne Alliance, part of the Alliance behind “The Bureau” (originally “Le Bureau des Legendes”) and “Marseille,” is currently working on a series around the anticipated Notre-Dame fire. in 2022, with a budget equal to that of “Lupine,” the producer said.
For Jonathan Gray, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, production companies outside the U.S. have also introduced reporting structures that can be exported overseas, all the way to the United States.
“I think the American palace, which is very infamous or boring when it comes to television” has been introduced by foreign representatives who have “stretched it a little better. , but which is still in a very recognizable form, ”said Gray.
Following in the footsteps of English language productions, more frequent presentations are given to “much more international topics and formats of reporting,” Britain said.
“Be it Versailles or Saint-Tropez, these are global themes,” he said, and will reach international audiences, such as (am) Mafia and Italy in “Gomorrah” or Colombia and the drug traffic there. the “Narcos.”
In “Lupine,” the Louvre museum works like a hook, but for Welsh, the success of the exhibition can be explained by the stage.
It “looks a bit like Luc Besson’s films (” The Fifth Element, “” Leon: The Professional “), the only French cinema man to understand the international market,” he said. In fact, there were several deputies of the director behind the camera for Lupine. – AFP