Think Global

The World is Your Oyster

I write this piece in front of a lovely sunset in Costa Rica.

From here, I’m managing business through Zoom and phone calls to Japan, London, and New York, while colleagues are working with us from Seoul, Hong Kong, Israel, Spain, Germany, and other distant locations, reminding me of our ever-shrinking planet.

So what does this have to do with Hollywood — beyond the obvious rush to other corners of the planet to save money? Quite a bit, actually.

First, I feel it’s important to think globally when films get made. Is there an international audience for your film? Will it be too American? Despite its powerful theme of equal pay for women, our film Lilly struggled internationally because it plays like an American procedural, full of courtrooms, government buildings, and lawyers’ offices. In a similar vein, I often pass on sports movies because I realize large swaths of the planet don’t care about football, baseball, basketball, or hockey.

It’s also important to recognize that the world is a rich source of programming and intellectual property. Just look at the success of Parasite, Squid Game, and K-Pop Demon Hunters from South Korea; Money Heist and Pan’s Labyrinth from Spain; and Dark from Germany. The global appetite for more than English-speaking films and television is undeniable.

In 2020, we adapted Israeli author Asher Kravitz’s novel The Jewish Dog into Shepherd—an English-language film set in Germany but shot in Budapest. Since then, we’ve optioned the Japanese arcade game Dance Dance Revolution, launched a fund called NokTurnal to collaborate with South Korean creators on adapting genre projects for English-language audiences, and begun producing Late Bloomer, a remake of the Japanese horror film Osoi Hito.

The point is that inspiration for entertainment can come from intellectual property anywhere in the world. Remakes, TV shows, books, articles, games, and toys can all be valuable as long as they have a universal human emotion ingrained in their DNA (or can have one grafted onto them).

On the practical side, we recently shot Anima, a US-set film, in the writer/director’s hometown of Bogotá, where crews cost about half as much as in the US. We’re planning to film Bear Season in Germany, both for its historical setting and funding opportunities. Our British project Key of Genius may shift to Ireland for economic reasons, and I’ve been invited to Albania to explore locations and incentives. I’ve also traveled to India to see Bollywood productions and to China during a time when collaborations were more feasible.

In short, there are compelling creative and economic reasons to broaden entertainment horizons worldwide.