Netflix speaks Arabic, Arabs speak Netflix: How SVOD is transforming Arabic series screenwriting

Abstract

While subscription of video-on-demand (SVOD) services has become increasingly popular across the world in recent years, the arrival of Netflix to the Arab world was transformational. As it stepped up to produce original Arabic series, Netflix-modelled services from the region proliferated, promising to challenge the existing Arabic series’ (musalsalat) routines in content and form. Since the Arab World is scarcely mentioned in the growing scholarly literature on SVODs, this article attempts to understand how the Arabic TV drama industry is recalibrating to this new transnational co-production context, particularly when it comes to developing series ideas and screenplays. Our aim is to analyse the creative interplay in which these ideas and screenplays are evaluated and developed. To this effect, we draw on original interviews with screenwriters, development producers and creative executives who have worked with Netflix on original Arabic series, as well as those who have worked with Shahid VIP, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab SVOD platform. Informed by the ‘Screen Idea System’ framework that suggests an understanding of the dynamics between the shaping elements of any new idea made for the screen, we explore whether the current business model results in certain cultural narratives and how this affects the perceptions of quality and success of the produced series. Our findings show that transnationalism is instigated by the writers’ perception of a transnational target audience, and is reflected strongly on the levels of production and creative decision-making. Moreover, the systems in which the series of both platforms are developed are in constant negotiations with the musalsalat conventions, while aiming to prompt novelty based on a Western perception of the idea of quality.