Presenter: Sandra Becker, Utrecht University, Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht, Netherlands

This lecture presents a case study of the Swedish multinational streaming service Viaplay, which extended its service to the Netherlands following the pandemic in March 2022. Between April 2022 and March 2023, Viaplay enthusiastically announced its first scripted Dutch Originals including drama, true crime and comedy productions. In summer 2023, Viaplay, however, cancelled all five of its planned Dutch productions due to the deterioration in earnings. The lecture thus focuses on Viaplay’s cancelled Dutch fiction slate as an outcome of market disruptions in global, and particularly European, streaming and original content production.