Disney+ Greenlights First Canadian Originals
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- Disney+ has greenlit its first-ever Canadian originals: eight-part comedy Knighted and true-crime series I'm Not Coming Back, with Paige Murray, Director of Development at Disney+ Canada, framing the move as a commitment to local storytelling
- Knighted, produced by Heavy Lifting Productions in association with 3 Arts Entertainment, follows a missing-person case that spirals into a documentary-style satire of a local medieval dinner theatre, developed by exec producer Bruce McCulloch of The Kids in the Hall
- I'm Not Coming Back, from Tuck Shop Media and Hodgee Films, dramatizes the 2019 Canadian manhunt for two armed fugitives on a killing spree, with authorities enlisting a member of the Fox Lake Cree Nation when national police leads ran dry
- Disney+ launched in Canada in 2019 but had resisted commissioning from the local production community for years, making these orders a notable reversal for the country's producers
- The greenlights come just over a week after Canada's government reversed plans to raise the required local-content spend for global streamers from 5% to 15% of Canadian revenues, with Prime Minister Mark Carney denying the reversal was linked to trade negotiations with the Trump administration
Why it matters: For Canadian producers shut out of Disney+ since its 2019 launch, the streamer finally commissioning local originals the same week Ottawa dropped its proposed 15% spending mandate back to 5% means Disney secures Canadian content without being legally compelled to fund it.
