¿Porque no los dos?: Language and business in cinema

¿Porque no los dos?: Language and business in cinema

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Looking at the top ten highest grossing films worldwide for 2015, reveals a few things about the entertainment industry. First, the United States made those 10 movies; second, the films made most of their money internationally, and third, they were all made in English.

The first point speaks to the general dominance the US film industry has had on the international market post-WWII put many European industries on pause. Ever since, the global market has been inundated with films made in the US. In theory, this would lead to the US film industry simply making US films, and distributing them internationally as an afterthought. This is not the case, as demonstrated by the second point: most of the box office sales for these films were made internationally.

Given the large amount of international sales, the primary markets of US-made films are now foreign countries. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, of the top 10 grossing films of all time, all were made by US studios, all were made in English, and 7 out of 10 made at least 61% of their sales outside of the US. This has an impact on the filmmaking process is several ways. Many, if not most, of those markets speak a first language other than English, and none of them have populations that mirror US demographics. How does the industry respond to the challenge of making films that not only appeal to the whole world, but also must be understood by a global audience?

Dubbing of course. This is most applicable with animated films, but is often applied to live action films as well. Well-known actors from the target country (such as Brazil) or market (such as Spanish-speaking countries) are picked to do the voices of the characters in the films. Often, dubbers will make a career out of dubbing the same actor’s voice. Jokes and references are changed to be more relevant to the audience as well. In theory, all of these changes could make the films completely awful. It would be a waste of money and time for the production companies. In fact, the films are widely praised, as can be seen through a simple google search for Star Wars dubbed in Spanish.

The act of dubbing is only worth the time and effort for huge blockbusters. For smaller budget films, subtitling is often the chosen route for translations. An unfortunate reality is that Hollywood is primarily run by and for the English-speaking world. This adds costs and risk to any film that is not in English. For example, when I was interning at a distribution company in Los Angeles, their focus was on genre films with low cost for international distribution. They primarily distributed on digital platforms, such as iTunes and Amazon, but sometimes chose streaming sites such as Netflix. Their costs included copyright acquisition, rating, subtitling, dubbing, translations, and host fees. The primary goal was to get the films available to as many markets as possible, while keeping the costs low. So if it was expensive to have a film translated or rated in a certain market or country, they would avoid it.

This example demonstrates the larger problem of how the language of a film directly influences where, how, and often if it is distributed. An English language film will have an easier time getting funding, getting made, getting distributed. A non-English film will likely encounter difficulty along each stage of the filmmaking process, simply because it’s perceived to be less marketable.

My question is: what is preventing US production companies and studios from producing foreign-language films? Why not take some advice from the past, and produce the same film in more than one language? The most prominent example of this in the past is the 1931 Spanish-language Dracula. This was a low-budget remake of the 1931 English-language film. It was double-shot, meaning it was produced on the same sets, with an entirely different crew and cast. The English version would use the sets during the day, and that night the Spanish version would do the same scenes. The Spanish-language version is often critically acclaimed and deemed better than the higher-budget English version.

What is preventing this practice from happening today? Why not make smaller budget films twice, and send them elsewhere? Logistically, studios could create branches in multiple countries, buy the rights to a single film, and produce it twice.

I’m certainly not the first person to ever think of this, so why is this not the industry standard? Studios such as Illumination Entertainment (Despicable Me, The Lorax) already have a business model that allows for work on the films to be done offsite. This reduces costs for the company, and is clearly working as seen by the box office sales of their films.

To hazard a guess, I’d say the thing preventing films being made in multiple languages, is the same thing that is creating a culture of sequels. There is an intense fear of failure from the big studios and production companies. The phrase “don’t fix what ain’t broke” comes to mind. Why should they stop making Marvel movies, Star Wars movies, or Harry Potter movies? It’s working! The answer lies in the fact the the movie business is yes, a business, but also an art form. No doubt audiences can consume 25 Star Wars films and studios will still turn a profit. But with that profit why not make something unique, or try something new? Sometimes the dubbing of a film can completely change it’s meaning and impact. In those cases, such as with the US versus Iranian Shrek (2001), very different films are produced from the same concept. Who’s to say there can’t be 25 more Star Wars movies done completely in Spanish, with a Spanish-speaking cast and crew? I’m certainly saying there can be, and I look forward to the day I can watch La Guerra de las Galaxias: Episodio Ventiuno… with English subtitles.