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Abstract: Since the 1990s, Sony Pictures Entertainment's local-language production unit has coproduced films with local partners outside of the English-language market. This strategy serves as a turning point toward industrywide local specialization and global expansion for conglomerate Hollywood. Based on trade publications, field research, and industry interviews, this article explores the multifaceted nature of Sony's attempt to operate what I call a "flexible localization strategy" in the Brazilian and Spanish film markets. To adapt to a vastly changing industrial climate, contemporary media conglomerates are reimagining media geographies and localization efforts. These strategies challenge earlier understandings of an all-powerful global Hollywood by revealing internal friction across conflicting institutional priorities, industrial practices, and local cultures of production and management.
In 2007, Sony Pictures Entertainment's (SPE) chief executive officer (CEO) Michael Lynton wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal titled "Glob- alization and Cultural Diversity," wherein he defended SPE's growing global operations, which were intent on expanding English-language media and lo- calizing production strategies for international markets. Lynton argued that these "are not signs of Hollywood's homogenizing effect on the world. They are signs of the world changing the way Hollywood works. It makes sense to marry our production, marketing, and distribution experience with the growing global ap- petite for entertainment tailor-made by and for a variety of cultures."1 In addition to adopting globalization rhetoric, Lynton attempts to spin the criticism of Hol- lywood studios' imperialist and homogenizing activities. This promotional piece raises the question of how Sony's production strategies actually operate on a global level. One such strategy-local-language productions-was both a Sony corporate initiative and a larger industrywide experiment inspired by notions of globalization. The way multinational companies like SPE are reimagining media geographies and localization strategies reveals both internal friction between conflicting institutional priorities and the difficulties of managing and integrating various local cultures of production across a transformative industrial climate.
Local-language productions (LLPs) are a fairly recent phenomenon of the con- glomerate Hollywood era, during which cross-media and cross-company convergence as well as increased importance of international markets have shaped the post-1989 period.2 Much industrial and scholarly attention has been given to the global perfor- mance and production cultures surrounding multiplatform tentpole pictures and the increased "indiewoodization" of American independent cinema.3 Yet...