Versioning Program

The Canada Media Fund’s (CMF) Versioning Program is designed to expand the accessibility of CMF-funded projects to other audiences by adding voice-overs and/or subtitles to projects, in languages other than the original language. Versioning increases revenue potential in other markets when Canadian projects gain further national and international sales. Projects receive funding on a first-come, first-served basis.

In 2016-2017, the CMF’s Versioning Program had a $1.0M budget allocated to it, which was fully spent for the second year in a row, supporting 19 projects, the same amount as 2015-2016. A total of seven of the projects (36.8%) were initially produced in the English-language and there were nine projects (47.4%) in the Drama genre. 20.4% of total commitments went to the versioning of two seasons of “Blackstone” into French. Seven drama projects originally in Mandarin were versioned into Cantonese, receiving 65.2% of funding. Versioning of nine documentaries were also funded, five from French to English and four from English to French, receiving 12.6% of funding.