Every quarter, another streaming service or studio executive unveils their "international expansion" strategy with the confidence of someone who has discovered fire. The pitch is always the same: produce more content in more languages, adapt stories for different markets, go global or go home. It's being presented as not just smart business, but as inevitable—the only rational response to a saturated domestic market.
I'm skeptical. Not of international content itself, which has obvious value. But of the unexamined assumption that this particular approach to globalization is the only path forward, or even the best one.
The current model treats international markets like expanding circles to fill. Produce a show in Korean. Make a Spanish adaptation. Commission a Polish thriller. Each property becomes a franchise unto itself, each market a separate revenue stream. On the surface, this seems logical. On closer inspection, it's a strategy built on some shaky premises.
First, there's the cannibalization problem nobody wants to discuss. When you create five different versions of the same story for five different regions, you're not necessarily capturing five times the audience. You're often just fragmenting a single potential global audience. A viewer in Mexico might watch a local adaptation when they could have watched the original with subtitles. The question of whether the adaptation actually *improved* their experience rarely gets asked before production begins.
Second, this approach assumes cultural adaptation requires cultural replacement. Studios seem to believe that international audiences can only connect with stories told through a local lens. But the explosive global success of Korean dramas, British crime series, and anime suggests something different: audiences are hungry for *different* perspectives, not just reflections of their own. The real edge in international content comes from its foreignness, its specificity, its refusal to homogenize. Yet the adaptation strategy often sands away exactly these qualities in pursuit of "relatability."
There's also the uncomfortable economic reality: not every market justifies a full-scale original production. Throwing resources at 30 different regional adaptations is not the same as making smart bets on distinct creative voices. Some of this money might be better spent on one genuinely excellent international series that finds its own global audience, rather than five mediocre local versions of a proven formula.
The industry is being sold on globalization as a volume game. More content, more languages, more versions equals more growth. But this assumes that markets are endlessly expandable and that audience attention is unlimited. Neither is true. What's actually happening is that studios are competing for finite viewing hours by multiplying their output. The math works only if every version finds its audience. When it doesn't, you're left with expensive waste.
The more troubling implication is that this strategy lets studios off the hook. Instead of genuinely understanding international audiences and what they want to watch, the adaptation model allows companies to stay in comfortable creative territory while simply repackaging for new markets. It's expansion without risk, growth without innovation.
None of this means international content shouldn't be made, or that adaptation is always wrong. But the current consensus that this is the inevitable future deserves pushback. What if the future actually belongs to studios willing to invest in truly distinct creative voices from around the world, rather than those simply making more versions of the same stories?
The industry is moving fast, committing billions to this strategy. That's exactly when we should slow down and ask harder questions.