With foreign language content becoming a hotbed of activity for streamers looking to expand their subscription bases, it has been very interesting to see which companies are focusing on which geographic locations. With Prime Video, via their Prime Video Nordics arm, we now see an even deeper push into original unscripted content for this market, covering Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland. Brandon Blake, entertainment lawyer from Blake & Wang P.A, shares all the news.
Scandinavian Unscripted Originals
Complete with a rather splashy event to celebrate, we have seen them announce a fairly robust slate of new unscripted originals for the Scandinavian market. Additionally, a multi-territory movie deal with Nordisk Film to show upcoming titles, like The Hunger Games prequel and John Wick: Chapter 4, as well as the critically well-received The Fabelmans, has also been struck.
Key among these will be a Swedish edition of Prime Video’s popular LOL: Last One Standing. A rework of the original Japanese concept, this series sees 10 local comedians challenge themselves to be the ‘last one standing’ with a straight face as they try to make each other laugh. The grand prize- in this case $470,000, goes to a charity of their choice. It is set to air by the end of December. LOL: Last One Standing,in particular, is a format Prime Video have been mining with relative success across their global presences, including a Nigerian edition. Sweethearts, Pranked, and Good Luck Guys will also be getting Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish editions.
All in all, the new announcement will bring their local originals up to 18 for the service, including newly announced scripted comedy Toppen and competition series The Bridge, both of which are set to air by the end of the year.
Global Expansion and the Nordisk Deal
The upcoming deal with Nordisk Films will run for three years from 2023. In addition to a rather juicy slate of globally released English films, there will also be some key Nordic titles involved in the deal.
The rhetoric around the strong push into content for the area has made much of their commitment to the Nordic areas over the long term. While for the most part we have seen streamers focusing on Latin America and Africa for their local content pushes, the Nordic territories have seen some interest across the board, too. In particular, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland also fall under the EU banner. We’ve recently seen a concerted push from the EU to compel streamers to show more local content on their services, so this will also help further Amazon’s efforts in that arena.
We’re likely to see a stronger focus on locally sourced and produced content, as well as local language content, across the board as streamers fight to expand their subscriber footprint into new markets. It’s particularly interesting to see Amazon focus so heavily on the Nordic areas, and it will be of great interest to see how this market expands further with time.
