LONDON—To the surprise of virtually no one, the majority of scripted movie and TV series programming on subscription video on demand was based on adaptations, franchises and other forms of pre-existing intellectual property (IP) in the first half of 2022, according to Ampere Analysis.
According to Ampere’s report, “How original are SVoD Originals?” 64% of such programming was based on characters and storylines viewers are already familiar with. Including Unscripted Originals, the share of IP-based commissions stood at 42% of new movies and First run Originals in the U.S. during the period, compared to 28% for their international commissions, reflecting the competitiveness and maturity of the groups’ native U.S. market, Ampere noted. SVoD players have increased their share of IP-based commissions in North America by seven percentage points over the last two years.
While Apple TV+ taps most heavily into pre-existing IP (53% of total new Originals in the year to end of H1 2022) as part of its high-budget Originals strategy, IP-based commissioning is generally the highest for studio-backed platforms like Paramount+ and Disney+ as they turn to internal—and primarily US-based—IP and franchises for their new commissions. But Ampere says this share is slowly decreasing for these studio platforms as they gradually increase their international footprint. For Disney+, IP-based titles represented 35% of its global new Originals output in the first half of 2022, down from over 60% in 2020.
The two leading independent SVoD players, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, have the lowest share of IP-based projects, according to Ampere. While leading by Originals spend level and commissioning output, Netflix has the lowest share of IP-based titles at 32%, a share that is steadily on the rise in the US market. The streaming giant is primarily drawing on book adaptations as the IP base, but also increasingly in a position to tap into some of its own hit titles and franchises to develop new Originals (e.g. its Stranger Things spin-off).
Warner Bros. Discovery’s platform Discovery+ has the lowest rate of IP-based titles (19%) due to its primarily Unscripted Originals slate. Overall, the share of IP-based titles is lower for Unscripted than Scripted commissions, although an increasing proportion of Unscripted Reality and Entertainment content is drawing on pre-existing formats for remakes, spin-offs or reboots for example, Ampere concluded.
