In “The Circle,” a reality competition show on Netflix, a group of strangers are sequestered for days inside a multistory apartment complex, angling to survive rounds of eliminations to win a cash prize, much like “Big Brother.” The twist is that the players can’t see or hear one another, and must communicate via text — people might not be what they seem, and anyone, at any time, could be catfishing.
As it turns out, “The Circle” has been doing some impersonation of its own, with one sleek setting standing in for a local building across several international versions of the show.
The neon-lit compound — which was initially a housing block in Salford, England, before moving, in 2023, to a complex in Atlanta, Georgia — has not only been the set for the series’ flagship American edition, which returns to Netflix for a seventh season on Sept. 11. It has also been used for “The Circle Brazil,” France’s “The Circle Game,” the British version of “The Circle” and its 2020 spinoff “The Celebrity Circle.” With minimal adjustments, the show can look like it’s located virtually anywhere in the world.
“We need a building with 10 rooms, without noise bleed, that looks great, is in a cool location, and that can house a team of 200 people in the basement,” Jack Burgess, an executive producer on “The Circle,” said in a recent interview. “That’s a hard thing to find, so of course you want to make the most of it.”
“The Circle” is one of many current reality programs taking advance of international production hubs: state-of-the-art bases where multiple production companies can pool resources to make versions of a show tailored to a variety of global markets.
In the past, local iterations would be produced separately, often in conjunction with domestic broadcasters. Versions of “Big Brother,” for instance, are built from the ground up in different territories, using their own crews and sets. But because each version of “The Circle” is for Netflix, Burgess said, it made sense to pool resources: “We’re able to be much more integrated, and everyone benefits from the scale of what we’ve created.”
Fabian Tobias, the managing director at the reality TV production house Endemol Shine Germany, said that the trend for these international hubs also reflected the need to save money. “The streamers are more sensitive with production costs, and this period of them flooding the market with money is over,” he said. At the same time, no one wants to make the shows seem cheaper or smaller — the trick is to drive down budgets without that showing onscreen.
“You could put reality stars into a simple house instead of a villa, or play ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ with a thousand bucks,” Tobias said. “But then it’s going to be lame, and you’ll ruin the format. The idea with hubs is that it’s a smart way to keep down costs without destroying production value.”
It would, in theory, be possible to do this with two different shows in the same market: Endemol Shine’s “Beauty and the Nerd” and “Promis Unter Palmen” (“Celebs Under Palm Trees”) both take place on remote tropical islands, and they could easily share a set. “We don’t do this, because they’d look the same, and we want people watching both,” Tobias said. The reason it works for international productions is that the audiences tend to be distinct: British people watch the U.K. version of “The Circle,” and Brazilians watch “The Circle Brasil,” and there is rarely much overlap between the two.
Still, many reality producers want their editions to stand apart, even as they share locations. “You still have to very much put your stamp on it, so it does feel like your territory,” said Nazleen Karim, an executive producer on “Love is Blind: U.K.” Karim’s version used the same set as “Love is Blind: Sweden,” but she wanted it to feel unique, adding bold colors and splashy décor. “We get very precious about it,” she said.
Karim said that working in a production hub also offered opportunities for learning. When one international team has finished with the set, they often share advice about what did and didn’t work, such as specific lighting cues that looked good in the space.
Burgess, the executive producer of “The Circle,” echoed that sentiment. He said that members of the French and Brazilian production teams shadowed his crew as it was making the American version to better understand the set. “You get all those learnings, and it just makes sure that the quality of each of those versions is as good as it can be,” he said.
Burgess added that, given the production’s demands, it would be cruel to force French and Brazilian colleagues to find a suitable apartment building of their own.
“The level of work that goes into putting this together is crazy,” he said. “You don’t want to have to do that three more times.”
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