MAY, 2019: Netflix has premiered three made-in-Asia animated series this year – Larva Island (based on Korean IP), pre-school show Yoohoo to the Rescue (also from Korea), and Mighty Little Bheem (non-verbal pre-school slapstick from India’s Green Gold).
“Asia is a huge growth area for family and kids,” says Melissa Cobb, Netflix’s VP for kids and family.
She describes the three shows as “really great examples” of the kind of product coming out of Asia, “and that’s really encouraging for us because they're doing well in their home territory, but they're also doing very well for us outside of Asia.
Mighty Little Bheem, for instance, was greenlit firstly because of its relevance for India, and has become a “really big show in Brazil.
“It wasn’t an obvious thing... “We’re seeing the ability of this content on Netflix to really find an audience globally,” she adds.
While the impact of Disney’s exit from Netflix by 2020 isn't clear right now, Cobb says kids and family content will continue to be core to the offering. About 60% of Netflix’s audience globally watch kids and family content every month, she says.
“In recent years, we have shifted towards more internally produced content, content that we're commissioning from the beginning versus licensing from other people. And part of that is to really lean into being able to have a diverse offering of content that is reflective of our very diverse audience globally,” she said on the sidelines of this year’s APOS in Bali in April.
Animation is a particular focus. “That’s a big growth area for us,” she says. “A lot of great animated content comes from Asia. So there’s a really nice synergy there because not only can we create content in Asia that is really well suited to the Asian market but also that will travel really well globally, which is ideal for us,” she adds.
Netflix's first feature film releases this year. Output rises to three animated features in 2020, including Over the Moonfrom Pearl Studio (the former Oriental Dreamworks) in China. By 2021, ...
MAY, 2019: Netflix has premiered three made-in-Asia animated series this year – Larva Island (based on Korean IP), pre-school show Yoohoo to the Rescue (also from Korea), and Mighty Little Bheem (non-verbal pre-school slapstick from India’s Green Gold).
“Asia is a huge growth area for family and kids,” says Melissa Cobb, Netflix’s VP for kids and family.
She describes the three shows as “really great examples” of the kind of product coming out of Asia, “and that’s really encouraging for us because they're doing well in their home territory, but they're also doing very well for us outside of Asia.
Mighty Little Bheem, for instance, was greenlit firstly because of its relevance for India, and has become a “really big show in Brazil.
“It wasn’t an obvious thing... “We’re seeing the ability of this content on Netflix to really find an audience globally,” she adds.
While the impact of Disney’s exit from Netflix by 2020 isn't clear right now, Cobb says kids and family content will continue to be core to the offering. About 60% of Netflix’s audience globally watch kids and family content every month, she says.
“In recent years, we have shifted towards more internally produced content, content that we're commissioning from the beginning versus licensing from other people. And part of that is to really lean into being able to have a diverse offering of content that is reflective of our very diverse audience globally,” she said on the sidelines of this year’s APOS in Bali in April.
Animation is a particular focus. “That’s a big growth area for us,” she says. “A lot of great animated content comes from Asia. So there’s a really nice synergy there because not only can we create content in Asia that is really well suited to the Asian market but also that will travel really well globally, which is ideal for us,” she adds.
Netflix's first feature film releases this year. Output rises to three animated features in 2020, including Over the Moonfrom Pearl Studio (the former Oriental Dreamworks) in China. By 2021, Netflix will have ramped up to five or six features a year, a goal Cobb describes as "very ambitious".
In Asia as everywhere, Cobb says children, “as soon as they become aware of the world around them, have an expectation “that the shows they watch will reflect that world in a really clear way, that there will be a diversity of characters,” she says.
“That speaks to the idea of global citizens growing up with more empathy for other cultures and other ways of living,” she adds.
Netflix requirements for kids/family originals are "a pretty easy to understand concept, really appealing characters, and a great creator who we feel can execute their vision with some confidence because we really want to support the creators. We don't want to micromanage them or tell them how they should do their job. We really want to be able to be in a position of supporting them because they know what they want to do," Cobb says.
Cobb says Netflix's approach ingiving creators "a lot of freedom in the way they work" includes the kids and family animation space across a diverse range of styles and types of shows. "And that's really game changing," she told APOS delegates. "It allows creators to really own the shows that they're making in a very deep and personal way," she added.
At the same time, there's support for local creators – including rebuilding infrastructure and pipelines – that will enable them to produce series that sit well on the global platform.
The global lens differentiates the Netflix slate. Kids, she says, is definitely not a sub-brand of the main event, and there is no set brand-box into which shows have to fit.
"We are offering a broad range of styles of shows. So some things might be more heavily social-emotional-education oriented. Other things might be just kind of silly slapstick," she says, adding: "There's room for a lot of different tones and styles because we're not trying to define ourselves by a single style of show".
Published in ContentAsia eNewsletter, 15 May 2019