Thanks Squid Game! More than half of English speakers now watch movies and series in VOST

Mostly Korean content.

The Korean wave, known as Hallyu, first flooded cinema – notably with the success of Bong Joon-Ho's Palme d'Or, Parasite. Having become the first foreign film to win the Oscar for Best Picture – a category usually reserved for English-language features – it remains to this day the Korean film that has had the most admissions worldwide. A little before, Americans had already begun to be seduced by foreign content on the small screen. Long known “allergic to subtitles”Americans are increasingly sensitive to films and series from different backgrounds.

According to a study conducted by the American marketing institute Ampere Analysis, and reported by IndieWire, 54% of the population living in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, aged between eighteen and sixty-four, watched foreign films and series in streaming in 2024. Among the youngest in this sample, the number of people watching content from abroad climbs to 66%. An increase of ten points compared to 2020 which can be explained by a phenomenon: Squid Game.

In 2021, Netflix sees Korean. Series Kingdom And Sweet Home are critically acclaimed and Squid Game – featuring a life-size game – is a real success. It is the series that has remained No. 1 in the ranking for the longest time with a total of 1.6 billion hours of views. More than 111 million households have seen it around the world, and many of them were not used to consuming Korean series. With such a score, Squid Game has reshuffled the cards with viewers and Netflix, changing their mode of production and consumption. In April 2023, in an official press release, Netflix announced that it would invest $2.5 billion over the next four years to develop and produce Korean films and series – double what was invested two years previously.

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But are these contents viewed in English or in their original language? According to surveys, the majority opt for the VOST version, while only 19% say they are satisfied with the dubbing. It must be said that subtitles offer several advantages: the absence of dubbing that is sometimes unconvincing or difficult to perform, learning another language (and why not Korean!?) and preserving the authenticity of the product. It seems, in fact, unlikely that a foreigner would express himself perfectly in English with an impeccable American accent, especially if his character has never learned this language.

If the Americans have therefore definitely passed the milestone, in France, the French versions of foreign series remain the most frequent way of consuming. It must be said that dubbing is generally done with care, by talented actors in our country, which is not always the case in other countries.

Squid Game: Seasons 2 and 3 have a release date on Netflix and a new teaser