From Korean drama to Nordic noir, how global financing changes creative decisions at the script stage
The Global Development Table
LONDON — The expansion of streaming platforms into international markets has produced a global co-production landscape that has materially changed which stories get developed, who writes them, and what creative compromises the financing structure requires. A drama series developed as a UK-German-French co-production serves three broadcast markets with distinct audience expectations, regulatory environments, and cultural contexts that the script must navigate from the first draft.
The creative consequences are real: co-production requirements that ensure each country’s contribution is visible on screen can produce stories that feel like tourist maps rather than lived realities — scenes in each partner country’s locations, characters from each nationality, storylines that reference each culture’s preoccupations. When this is done with craft, it can produce genuinely international drama that serves all markets. When it is done to satisfy financing conditions, it produces work that feels constructed rather than discovered.
The Korean Model
South Korean drama’s global success — accelerated by Parasite’s Oscar win, Squid Game’s streaming record, and the broader Hallyu wave — offers a counterexample to the co-production compromise model. Korean content has reached global audiences while remaining culturally specific rather than internationally averaged. The explanation lies partly in Netflix’s investment in Korean production with minimal creative interference, and partly in the strength of Korea’s existing drama production infrastructure, which had developed sophisticated storytelling and production craft for domestic audiences before global distribution arrived.
The lesson that some international producers have drawn — that culturally specific content can be globally successful — has influenced commissioning decisions at major platforms. The Variety international film coverage tracks production deals and distribution patterns. The creative implication for writers is that culturally authentic scripts, rather than internationally averaged ones, may now have more commercial viability than they did before streaming globalised distribution. Whether that trend sustains depends on platform strategy decisions that writers do not control.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com