From ‘Culpa Mía’ To ‘Maxton Hall’: Prime Video Unpacks YA Strategy – Berlin
Amazon international execs have opened up on its lean into romance-driven young adult drama and how it plans to keep surfing the YA wave.
The two Spain-produced adaptations of Mercedes Ron’s ‘Culpables’ novels, Culpa Mía and Culpa Tuya, have been huge hits. The latter is Prime Video’s biggest ever international original. The final instalment drops later this year. English-language movie My Fault: London has just launched. Out of Germany, Maxton Hall has been a massive success and is also in Prime Video’s top-ten international shows for last year. Season 2 launches soon.
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These shows skew young and female. That’s a demo Prime Video originals had not hitherto delivered to the streamer.
“YA is not a genre, it’s an audience,” said Tara Erer, Head of North European Originals at Amazon MGM Studios. She added that this audience “don’t care about the language, they care about the content.” That checks out given the success of Spanish and German-language series. A whopping 90% of the audience for Culpa Tuya came from outside of Spain.
English-speaking audiences are an exception to the rule, however, given they are not as familiar with dubbing and subtitles. That led to the Culpa Mía remake My Fault: London, according to Erer. “We saw a real opportunity in English-speaking places and that there was still an untapped audience.”
The Amazon MGM execs were talking at the TV series component of the Berlin Film Festival.
Ron’s ‘Cuplables’ novels and Mona Kasten’s ‘Save’ series (adapted as Maxton Hall) were huge on Wattpad. In that environment, Erer said sourcing IP means looking beyond the traditional routes. “The way we look for books now, we’re not looking at New York Times bestsellers, we’re not looking at those traditional publishers and agents. I live on BookTok.”
The casting process is also different, she added: “It’s really [about] understanding what that audience cares about, which isn’t big stars. It’s characters that they can empathize with, characters who are going through the trials and tribulations that they are.”
The success of the abovementioned series, as well as the likes of The Summer I Turned Pretty series and The Idea Of You movie, have created a moment in which romantic YA drama is red hot. But success has not happened overnight, Philip Pratt, Head of German Originals, Amazon MGM Studios explained.
“We had multiple tries; we bought American content, we had several German series that were specifically catering to younger audiences, but which didn’t work out,” he said. “It takes a tremendous creative crew, talent teams, a great story, and all of these puzzle pieces coming together to create some hits.”
Now Prime Video has gotten into its romantic YA Stride it plans to capitalize. “Culpa Mía has started a new trend,” said Nicole Morganti, Head of Originals, Southern Europe, Amazon MGM Studios. “Because of that success we have been able to bring more and more ideas to the company and get more support for the shows that we had in development.”
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