As South African film and TV industry workers continued to grapple with the fallout from Canal+’s abrupt decision to shutter homegrown streaming service Showmax this week, one question seemed to be on the lips of every attendee at the JBX market in Johannesburg.
What next?
Taken in a vacuum, the news didn’t come as a complete shock. There’d been a sense of foreboding since the French media giant completed its $2 billion takeover of South African pay-TV company MultiChoice last year, with the company mum on its post-merger plans and suspicion rampant that cost-cutting measures were in the cards.
Showmax, a loss-making streamer that was a direct competitor of Canal+’s own SVOD service in Africa, was a logical target. Since relaunching the platform in 2024 with NBCUniversal, MultiChoice and its Comcast partner poured a combined $309 million in equity funding into Showmax to primarily fuel content creation.
In the end, though, nothing came of the streamer’s aggressive growth and subscriber uptake targets. Just two months ago, Canal+ CFO Amandine Ferré insisted that the platform’s losses were “unacceptable” to her company as it weighed the streamer’s fate. The writing was on the wall.
That didn’t make the news any easier to swallow around the JBX market this week, with one producer confessing he felt “ill” over the announcement and another ruing that the move effectively “decapitated the only African streamer.” The fact that the news broke during the Joburg Film Festival — an event sponsored by MultiChoice — hardly improved the optics of a move that, whatever its upside for shareholders, felt like “a slap in the face” to African filmmakers, according to one Johannesburg-based producer.
What comes next for Canal+’s streaming strategy on the continent remains anybody’s guess. But as one industry source summed up: “Producers are freaking the fuck out.”
The decision, after all, comes two years after Prime Video scaled back its own ambitions to become the biggest player on the continent, effectively pulling out of the African market. Netflix says it remains committed to the continent — at a glitzy Joburg mixer this week, the streamer’s head of African scripted Kaye-Ann Williams insisted that it’s “here to stay” — but the lack of competition will only weaken the hand of African producers.
If the old proverb holds true that when the elephants tussle, it’s the grass that suffers, the same might be said of content creators in this age of endless mergers, acquisitions and corporate consolidations.
The mood around the JBX Talks conference this week was funereal. “Streaming was seen as the great democratizer — especially in Africa,” producer Paul Buys lamented. “Losing Amazon was devastating. Losing Showmax was devastating. We have less and less options locally.” Or, as another South African producer bluntly put it: “Show me the buyers.”
Netflix original series “GO!” was produced in South Africa.
Courtesy of Netflix
If there was a silver lining to the clouds this week in a rainy Johannesburg, it’s that African filmmakers have long prided themselves on being resilient — and resourceful. “Every fight is a new fight,” said Neil Brandt, a founding partner of the Johannesburg-based production outfit Storyscope. “To survive, you’ve got to be nimble.”
More than one speaker at the JBX Talks conference invoked the Southern African philosophy of ubuntu as they called on each other to rally behind a common cause. While losing one of the continent’s key commissioners — especially in English-speaking territories — will be a bitter pill to swallow, there were calls for more partnerships, more collaborations, more efforts to unlock cross-border revenue streams in everything from theatrical to free-to-air broadcasting.
There were hopes, too, that technology might finally be on the continent’s side. Speaking at the JBX Talks conference, Brandt cited the example of Senegalese-born influencer and TikTok superstar Khaby Lame, whose company Step Distinctive was acquired last year for close to $1 billion. “He’s an entrepreneur who understood the new economy and monetized it in a way that reaches a [global] audience,” the producer said. “This is an inspiration. An African-born, homegrown content creator…owning the narrative and thinking out of the box.”
That an African creator should strike gold with vertical content is perhaps a natural iteration of where the technology is headed: A continent with a billion-plus mobile phones — which, for most consumers, function as the first and only screen — Africa could be the next untapped market for a microdrama industry that’s projected to grow to $26 billion in annual revenue by 2030.
Cape Town-based production company Both Worlds, which this week announced a partnership with U.S. outfit Freeli Films to co-produce a slate of vertical series and movies, is betting that’s the case, with a distribution strategy built around partnerships with major mobile operators across the continent. Thierry Cassuto, the company’s executive chairman, noted that in China, which gave birth to microdramas, the vertical market outearned theatrical last year.
“The Chinese wrote the first chapter, so we need to learn that playbook,” said Cassuto. “But we need to set it aside and write our own.”
Elouise Kelly, country manager in South Africa for Viu, noted that the Asian streaming giant has already begun dubbing Korean microdramas into Indigenous South African languages like Zulu as it looks to expand into the African market. “What is the next iteration?” she said. “We need to see how to personalize it for South Africa and Africa and make it our own. Because I think that’s where the opportunity lies.”
Taye Diggs will star in Africa-set microdramas alongside local stars.
Courtesy of Freeli Films
For Africa to unlock the potential of vertical formats — or to incorporate AI at scale into production workflows to finally level the playing field — would mark a “paradigm shift,” according to Brandt, who called on fellow African filmmakers to take risks and embrace new formats and technologies.
“[Vertical] is a new form of storytelling. If you understand it and embrace it, you can find an audience,” he said. “There’s a gold mine out there. People always want stories.”
“There’s lot of places where your storytelling can fit,” added Thandeka Zwana, of South Africa’s Indigenous Film Distribution. “Adapt. Think different. Widen your horizons. Adapt to a changing world. See how consumers are changing. Because they are not stagnant. You cannot tell the same story in the same way and expect the audience to keep watching.”
The Joburg Film Festival runs March 3 – 8 in Johannesburg.
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