I've been watching a lot of TV lately. Reading a lot of books too. And I keep noticing something I can't stop thinking about: Canadian stories are having a moment, and I'm not sure Canadians are the ones who benefit most from it.
This episode is about intellectual property. Specifically, what happens to the value of a Canadian story once it's adapted, licensed, and streamed around the world. That covers original scripts from Canadian showrunners and screenwriters, and it covers adaptations of books and articles by Canadian writers.
I'm a consumer, not an industry expert. These are questions, not conclusions. But I think they're questions we need to be asking out loud.
The Shows I'm Talking About
A few examples to ground this:
- Sterling Point, developed for Prime Video
- Every Year After, based on a Carley Fortune book (with another of her books being adapted next year)
- Heated Rivalry, based on the book series by Rachel Reid, a writer in Nova Scotia. It was developed for Crave and then licensed to HBO.
- Below, a Netflix original starring Josh Hartnett, set in Newfoundland. It's currently number one in 53 countries.
The production of Below has said that $90 million was invested into the Canadian economy. That sounds great, right?
The $90 Million Is the Smallest Piece
Here's what that $90 million actually represents. A lot of it comes from the Canadian government, to make investing in Canada attractive. It funds jobs and tourism. Productions source props locally, hire people to build sets, and spend money in the communities where they film. That's a real local benefit, and I understand why we facilitate it.
But it's the short-term payoff. The true value is the intellectual property.
Look at Rachel Reid. HarperCollins credited the sales of Heated Rivalry and the other books in her series with an 8% rise in its book sales in the first quarter of 2026. If you do the math, that's roughly $40 million. Rachel didn't get all of that, obviously. It depends on her contract, and I have no idea what's in it.
HarperCollins is American. HBO is American.
The reported figures say Heated Rivalry cost about $12 million to produce and HBO paid about $3 million to license it. I can't verify those numbers. They're what's coming up in industry reporting. But the long-term value, with licensing, additional seasons, and everything that follows, has to be much, much higher than the original investment. We're probably looking at hundreds of millions.
So who owns that? Americans do. A Canadian story, written by a Canadian, produced in Canada, and the value of that storytelling now sits south of the border.
I hope Rachel has great agents and lawyers. I hope she can renegotiate as more books come out. I genuinely don't know. And the same logic applies to Below. That $90 million is a fraction of what it's truly worth.
Nobody Reports What a Show Is Worth
Something I noticed while digging into this: industry reporting covers what things cost to make. Actor salaries. How much was invested. How much went back into the local economy.
It doesn't talk about what the project is worth overall.
I couldn't even find a number for Stranger Things. It's been around for roughly a decade. It's Netflix's flagship show. You'd assume it's worth billions at this point. I could find rough reporting that the final season cost somewhere in the range of $400 to $500 million to produce, with all the CGI, the special effects, and the actor salaries by that point. So the profit has to be in the billions. There's no number anywhere to show it.
It's all tied up in non-disclosure agreements. Top secret.
So how are creators supposed to understand the true value of what they're negotiating? And how is a government supposed to know what streamers are earning from Canadian stories if they're never required to disclose it?
Why This Became a Trade Issue
This is where it gets geopolitical.
Canada's Online Streaming Act, passed in 2023, requires streamers to invest 5% of their Canadian revenues back into Canadian content, Indigenous content, and French-language content. The U.S. has named this a trade irritant. They don't want to pay it. They don't want to invest in discoverability for other languages. They preferred the deal as it stood before 2023.
What I find so interesting is the timing. It usually takes 18 months to three years to develop intellectual property. So we're only now starting to see the value of Canadian projects that began filming in 2024, 2025, and 2026, after that legislation came into effect. The pushback is arriving right as the value becomes visible.
The Story Changes on the Way to the Screen
Here's the part that bothers me most.
In some of these adaptations, the story itself changed so that not all of the characters are Canadian.
In Every Year After, one of the main characters comes up for the summer and then leaves. On screen, she's American. In the book, she was Canadian, because Carley Fortune is a Canadian writer writing a Canadian story.
Sterling Point has a similar thread. A character discovers their mother was Canadian, something they never knew. There's an estate issue. They have to come to Canada to resolve it, and they end up owning premier property in Muskoka.
So I have to ask. What's the benefit to a company based in a country that keeps pushing the 51st state narrative, with a history of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism, of selling the value of Canadian real estate and close cross-border relationships?
If we look at five or 10 years' worth of this kind of storytelling, what does it normalize? Does it support a separate and sovereign Canadian identity? Or does it normalize a perception that what's valuable in Canada is there for the taking?
When does storytelling cross the line into propaganda that's used to persuade politically?
Why I Notice This
You may not know this about me. My mom was born in Glasgow, Scotland. My dad was born in Duisburg, Germany, in the 1930s. They were children when World War II started.
So my whole childhood, and really my whole life, has been about understanding the war from different sides. I spent a lot of my childhood watching war movies. In English, obviously. I don't speak German.
A lot of the Hollywood movies about World War II were propaganda after the fact. And honestly, they never presented Germans well at all. To the victor go the spoils. The victors write the history, and they write the story.
Those movies didn't reflect what it was like for an ordinary German family who wasn't supporting Nazism. People trying to survive. Doing what they had to do. I don't know the full story of my own family's experience. But I learned early that there's always nuance. Whatever side you're on, you're telling the story you perceive to be true. And there's always a way to find the story that serves both sides and reach some kind of consensus.
That's why storytelling has always fascinated me. It's a tool of influence. It's a tool of propaganda.
So when I see strategic changes like these made across multiple shows, I start to wonder about the intention at the company level. I'd love to believe these are companies operating separately from government. But we know these billionaires are regularly invited into the White House. It's not out of the realm of possibility that some of this is politically motivated.
I'm speculating. I'm saying that clearly. This is critical thinking. I'm asking questions.
What Would It Take to Do This Ourselves?
The bigger questions I'm sitting with:
- Can we renegotiate how we authorize the licensing of Canadian intellectual property?
- How do we negotiate access to our locations and resources for filming?
- How do we invest in Canadian filmmakers, and in all the artists it takes to make film and TV, in a way that's sustainable after a production leaves?
Because productions come in, and then they go. They come in, and they go. In between, unless you're lucky enough to land the next project right away, it's unemployment. Where's the continuity? Where's the plan for stability?
And ultimately: can we build a film and TV industry that produces world-class content without depending on the United States, in a way that respects our sovereignty?
The Futurist Question
This is where it becomes a scenario exercise for me. What world do we want to wake up in 10 years from now? Twenty years from now? What does it look like if we make different choices and negotiate in different ways?
I think that could be really fascinating to explore.
If you work in the industry, I'd love to hear from you. Tell me what I'm missing. Tell me what you're seeing from the inside.
Get in Touch
- Email me your questions: nola@nolasimon.com
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That last one is an experiment. I'm told subscriptions drive chart rankings, and I want to test whether charting actually increases visibility. More visibility means more people asking these questions about how we want to live and work in the future.
Anyways, that's it. Thanks for listening.
