How many German productions have you seen? How many French?
Germany and France each produce just as much or even more content than the UK.
Yet, none of this content ever leaves the country. British content can directly be sold on the US market, which means they can get much more money from those licensing deals to finance more productions.
The only situation where German or French productions show up internationally are nature documentaries (many of the documentaries the BBC or PBS show are produced by Germans, or as cooperation).
The English-speaking market is so large that English productions always have an advantage, and US productions even more. A US production reaches 300 million people in its home market, and a billion globally. A German production reaches 80 million in the home market, and 130 million globally.
And that's without the venefits hollywood has from having all the actors, staff and technology in one place.
>Yet, none of this content ever leaves the country.
And whose fault is this? People enjoy Japanese media all over the world despite the language barrier. French media used to be very popular in my country, like for example Louis de Funès movies? Even Iceland produces media that's popular worldwide, like Lazy Town or Bjork.
There probably are (something like Sri-Lanka/India or Guatemala/Mexico), but even if there aren't, what is this supposed to indicate? Yes, USA has strong film industry, fueled by its strong economy and large population. American films are distributed worldwide and tend to be popular with people. There's no other country that can match USA in the sheer volume (maybe China and India). But when making a movie you don't need to compete with the entire country. You just need to produce something that's appealing to the audiences. Somebody from Bulgaria doesn't care if the movie is American or German made, it's going to be dubbed in Bulgarian anyway.
But the EU has a greater population than the US. I don't know anything about economics, but surely the EU as a whole is as strong as the US economy. So... why can't the EU create a movie industry that is as dominant as Hollywood?
Spanish is a bit complicated in this context because I think the question was about nation of origin not language (though language is the offered reason for French/German-origin productions being hard to export.) A lot of the Spanish-language content in the US is, I think, US origin. Though a fair amount is of Latin American (particularly Mexican) origin, and some from elsewhere. But, yeah, there is a lot of Spanish-language, foreign produced content consumed in the US, and not all by native Spanish speakers.
Germany and France each produce just as much or even more content than the UK.
Yet, none of this content ever leaves the country. British content can directly be sold on the US market, which means they can get much more money from those licensing deals to finance more productions.
The only situation where German or French productions show up internationally are nature documentaries (many of the documentaries the BBC or PBS show are produced by Germans, or as cooperation).
The English-speaking market is so large that English productions always have an advantage, and US productions even more. A US production reaches 300 million people in its home market, and a billion globally. A German production reaches 80 million in the home market, and 130 million globally.
And that's without the venefits hollywood has from having all the actors, staff and technology in one place.
This battle has been decided long ago.