With Disney+ being a global streaming platform, over the years we’ve seen many shows and films created outside of the United States, with Japanese anime, Korean dramas and British romps.   This boost of global originals has been spurred on by Netflix, which has an incredible assortment of films and shows from around the world, appealing to a large audience on a global scale, while also boosting local interest in stories.

Disney has followed Netflix’s lead, investing in countless international originals from around the world, with shows like “Renegade Nell”,  “Shardlake”, “The Artful Dodger” and most recently, “The Stolen Girl”. 

Walt Disney Television President Eric Schrier recently spoke with Deadline to promote the upcoming slate of shows and he was asked about Disney’s global original strategy for Disney+. 

As part of the restructuring within Disney, the international originals division was merged into Disney Entertainment, with Eric explaining the current situation:

She [Disney Entertainment’s Dana Walden] asked me to take on overseeing our local originals two years ago. At the time, we were producing over 140 shows all around the world, and now we’re producing about 100 shows around world for Disney+, all in their local languages, in 25 different countries. It’s fascinating to see the creativity that’s coming to fruition all around the world, and to help support that.

We have teams in all of these markets that we’re producing shows that are selecting and developing shows to commission for their audiences. Our strategy is very unique, I think, in the marketplace, which is, we have global brands and global IP that travel the world. We have Star Wars, Marvel, Disney Branded, Pixar, FX, Hulu originals, ABC shows.

These shows travel the world and are known really well. So we don’t need to make an excess volume of local originals. But what we need to do is complement those global shows with locally relevant stories for the audiences in the markets in which we have Disney+. For example, in Spain, we produced a show last year called Invisible, which is based on a very well known book there; that was in Spanish, intended for a Spanish audience.

While local content is mainly created for individual countries, ideally, these shows will also be popular in other countries, and Eric explained why that is important:

If they ultimately travel, great, but they’re really designed and built to work for the local audience. It’s a local-for-local strategy that’s really working. In Latin America, we have The Boss, which is a very big show in Argentina, and Amor da Minha Vida, which has performed really well in Brazil.

We had 16 BAFTA nominations last year. In the UK, Rivals was a big hit for us. A Thousand Blows just finished its run, it’s doing very well as well. And just two weeks ago, we premiered The Stolen Girl, which did really well in the UK, and is also doing very well in Hulu and Freeform here in the U.S. So we’re looking at these titles on a global basis, but really designing them for the local markets to have local language and local flavor for that specific market.

We produce a lot of Korean dramas that have traveled really well. Moving, created by Kang Full, and his second series, Light Shop, both have done tremendously well. He’s a really inventive creator; he’s actually a perfect example of the unique creativity that I’m finding all around the world. He’s developing a subsequent season of Moving right now.

In France, we had a big win this spring with Bref.2, a really unique half-hour show that was based on a series of 2011 shorts. Our team in France developed it with the producers, got them to do six 30-minute episodes, and it took France by storm. That’s a good example of a show that was designed based on a title that had worked there, hadn’t been done or seen in a long time, and the shorts were two- to three-minute episodes. It was rebooted and hit the zeitgeist in France, and that’s exactly what we want to do.

One of the things picked up on during that interview was that they’ve drastically reduced the international output from 140 projects a year, down to around a hundred, to which Eric explained why:

It was two things. One was, we were producing about 30 to 40 shows in India, and now India is part of a joint venture with Reliance. We are no longer working on those shows, so that’s part of the decrease in the number. And then I think initially, we weren’t as strategic as we needed to be. When [CEO] Bob [Iger] came back to Disney, he looked at all the programming we were doing, and we just needed to curate the programming more for the needs of the streaming platform.

When I first came in, we were making lots of shows all around the world, and there wasn’t a cohesive strategy. So Dana created this role where it’s global original television strategy, and part of my role is to help create a cohesive strategy with our partners at the direct-to-consumer unit, with [Direct-to-consumer President] Joe Earley and his team, to be more strategic about what we’re making. Disney is based on long-running IP, and our our goal is to create long-running IP that can help power the platform for many years to come.

With Disney drastically cutting back how much content it makes, for streaming, linear and theatrical releases, its still very noticable that the sheer number of projects in development globally does feel like its decreased and I do also wonder how many of those 100+ projects in development have already been released on Disney+, or if those are unreleased projects.  

Disney+ is currently available in over 150 markets around the world, so it’s very clear that not all countries are being treated equally for original content.  Japan, Korea and Australia have multiple originals still in development, while Europe and Latin America also continue to invest in local content. 

Things could also change with the recent announcement that President Trump wants to implement a 100% tariff on films made outside the US, which might have a major impact on whether future international originals even get released in the United States, or if development slows down further.   Many countries have quotas or levies in place to force streaming services like Disney+ to offer local content, so hopefully, we will continue to see Disney+ receive more local original content. However, I could easily see Disney making changes to its strategy in the future. 

What do you think of Disney’s international strategy?  Let me know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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