Prime Video Unveils Top Traveling Non-English Originals, Global Execs Talk ‘Citadel,’ Writers Strike Impact and Rights Flexibility (EXCLUSIVE)

Prime Video has revealed its top traveling non-English local originals in the history of the service, with Spanish YA romance “My Fault” and French crime thriller “Medellín” topping the list.

Both are feature films that launched in the last two weeks across Prime Video’s footprint in 240 countries around the world. Interestingly, both titles have more than 75% of their viewership coming from outside their country of origin (Spain for “My Fault,” and France for “Medellín”), though Prime Video hasn’t disclosed any further metrics related to ratings or impressions. Of the list (available in full below), 60% are movies and 40% are TV series.

While it makes sense for local originals like Prime Video’s unscripted format “LOL” to perform well in their home countries — “Big local stars and very local comedy — those don’t really travel beyond their borders,” explains James Farrell, VP of international originals for Amazon Studios — the reason the streamer is highlighting this crop of non-English originals is because they’re the first to penetrate internationally.

“These are the biggest two we’ve ever had to break borders and just travel the whole world,” Farrell tells Variety. “This is a step change that we’ve seen. And when we went back and looked at the last 12 months, there’s eight different countries represented among the titles that are travelling the world.”

Directed by Domingo Gonzalez, “My Fault” (“Culpa Mía”) launched on June 8 and is based on Mercedes Ron’s best-selling “Culpables” book trilogy, about a headstrong girl, Noah, who’s forced into a different world when her mother moves the family into her wealthy boyfriend’s mansion. There, Noah falls in love with her rebellious stepbrother and the pair have a forbidden affair. The film was the number one movie worldwide on Prime Video during its opening weekend.

Kelly Day, VP of international for Prime Video, says the service hopes “My Fault” will serve as adjacent programming for hit U.S. original series “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” an adaptation of Jenny Han’s “Summer” trilogy that was a surprise sensation for the streamer last year.

“We are very focused on the YA cohort and we’re really trying to reach more YA audiences,” Day tells Variety. “We’ve got a pretty well-established track record in big action, adventure and sci-fi that’s frankly slightly more male-skewing and older-targeted content. But last year we had a pretty big hit with ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty,’ which is coming back. So it’s great now to see some success in really appealing to that young female demographic with a non-U.S. title. We’re really thinking about how to cross-promote and cross-market between all of these different YA titles regardless of the country of origin.”

Elsewhere, France’s “Medellín” — which includes Mike Tyson among its cast — launched on June 2. The story, by Franck Gastambide and Charles Van Thieghem, follows Pablito, a young YouTuber fascinated by Pablo Escobar, who flies to Medellín, Colombia, to walk in the notorious drug lord’s footsteps. But when Pablito is kidnapped by a group of Narcos, it falls to his big brother to assemble a rescue mission and go head to head with the drug cartel.

Prime Video’s Top 10 globally most watched non-English language original movies and series — based on performance outside of their country of origin — are below, with rankings based on opening three-day viewing figures:

1. “My Fault” (“Culpa Mía,” Movie, Spain, June 2023)
2. “Medellin” (“Medellín,” Movie, France, June 2023)
3. “Sayen” (Movie, Chile, March 2023)
4. “A Private Affair” (“Un Asunto Privado,” TV Series, Spain, September 2022)
5. “The Gryphon” (“Der Greif,” TV Series, Germany, May 2023)
6. “Overdose” (Movie, France, November, 2022)
7. “The Head of Joaquín Murrieta” (“La Cabeza de Joaquín Murrieta,” TV Series, Mexico, February 2023)
8. “Fakes” (“Farzi,” TV Series, India, February 2023)
9. “Gangs of Lagos” (Movie, Nigeria, April 2023)
10. “Argentina 1985” (Movie, Argentina, October 2022)

Read on for Variety’s interview with James Farrell and Kelly Day:

How are you positioning these international originals alongside the U.S. tentpoles you have on the service. What’s the priority?

Day: Prime Video has had a history of taking big U.S. originals — let’s be honest — and pushing them out internationally, so they get dubbed and subtitled and localized and pushed out around the world. And, you know, we’ve seen those work. So, when we create a show like “Citadel” or “Lord of the Rings” or something, yes, we tend to get big viewership from all of our international territories. What we’ve really tried to do in the last year and a half, though, is focus a lot more on how we get the shows and movies that are produced outside of the U.S. to travel better, both back into the U.S. but as well as to other regions. So we have a program that we stood up a little over a year ago where we really focus on getting titles to travel, and we appointed a dedicated leader for that. Over the last year, she’s been very focused on not only identifying which titles we think are most likely to travel, but then working with the product teams on getting them to surface better naturally within the carousels on Prime Video so that they do naturally pop up on the homepage if we think you’re likely to want to watch them. We’re also working with the marketing teams globally to be able to really support those titles in a way that is similar and commensurate with what we have coming out of the U.S.

Are there certain genres that are standing out? Action, espionage and romance seem to do well for you guys.

Farrell: That’s right, you named the genres right there. And I think it’s also a little bit about diasporas, kind of getting the flywheel going. So just sticking with the U.K. as an example, the U.K. has got a decent-size population from India and Nigeria. So when that population starts to watch “Farzi” or “Gangs of Lagos,” it starts to spread a little bit. The French action movies on that list, “Medellin” and “Overdose,” are really well-produced action movies. So that does travel around the world. But then it’s also those diasporas. We’re finding ways to activate them.

Will there be more of a focus on international programming for you going forward, given the ongoing writers strike and the possibility of a strike by SAG-AFTRA next month?

Farrell: I wouldn’t say there was some meeting where we said, “Alright, now we’ve got to do things differently.” I think we like our plan internationally, and what titles like “My Fault” and “Medellín” have shown us is that if we make good titles, and we get them in front of customers, they will fill important programming needs. So, you know what, if there are some months in the future — 6, 12 or 18 months in the future — that are somehow impacted in the programming schedule by the U.S. writers strike, hey, we got some good content from around the world and we can use it to fill in those holes and keep customers happy.

James, at Series Mania this year, you spoke about the growing flexibility when it comes to sharing rights internationally. Can you talk about how that opens things up creatively as you try to source these global originals?

Farrell: Well, it does open up things creatively, marketing-wise, product-wise — everywhere. Because before, if we were taking all rights, some things wouldn’t been available to us. A star or a writer would say, “You know what, I really want this to go to theatrical first.” And then we’d be saying, “No, it has to go on streaming first,” and maybe that wouldn’t work. Or if a company had a tight relationship with a broadcaster, and they said, “It’s really important to us that we keep broadcast rights for the whole country for a second window or even a first window.” Before, we’d have said that maybe that’s tough for us. But now when we show the flexibility, suddenly new ideas that are really good ideas that we think can travel, [emerge]. We’re also flexible, and we say, “You know what, it’s not the end of the world if we premiere a title and someone else goes 6-12 months after us.” Or if somebody has a really important country that they want to hold the rights to and they’re going to help out on some of the budget, that’s just pragmatic, good business. So it has really helped with stuff coming in, and the conversations with producers and everybody, so we’re definitely going to stick with that.

I wanted to ask about “Citadel” as well. At Banff last week, your head of drama series said that you’re waiting for the show to grow its audience domestically. How closely are you working with the U.S. team as you prepare the international spin-offs in Italy and India?

Farrell: I don’t think anybody’s attempted this before in different languages, and different countries. Of course you’ve got the Marvel universe and Star Wars and all that, but this is its own unique thing. We started with the concept in the U.S., with the idea that we’re going have all these people around the world, interconnected. And then it was like, “Who do we really trust? Who are some great producers that can really add value to this franchise?” And Cattleya in Italy, and Raj & DK in India, they’re the best in the business. So, we went to them and said, “Hey, how do we work in stories from your countries?” I don’t think we’ve announced what the stories are, by the way. They’re wonderful, but we play with timelines, so you’re slightly in the future and slightly in the past; characters cross over. But you’re right, that was not easy. It’s not like there was a book and you can just go back to chapter two. It’s all original ideas, which require a lot of meetings. We had a big summit in L.A. with all the people, all the different countries, throwing ideas and saying, “How are we going to plant Easter Eggs from this show to this show? What characters do we want to have cross over? What’s the right degree of complexity?” Because you want the show to stand on its own. If somebody only watches the show in India, you want them to be happy. But you also want that superfan to see how the two intersect and you need to do both.

Day: The Russo Brothers have been involved in all of the different iterations as well. When you you see the Italian spin-off or the Indian spin-off, it should feel no different in terms of quality and production values between what we saw in the U.S. series and what we see in the international versions. It really is intended to be this incredible weaving of these global stories together. And I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised.

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