Continued from Part 1:

Your foreign-language YouTube channels are a direct response to the collapse due to the war in the domestic ad market. With RPMs in the US being 12x higher than in Ukraine, what is the long-term vision? Do you see a future where Starlight Media's international digital revenue eventually surpasses its traditional Ukrainian TV business?

Our strategy isn’t solely about targeting high-RPM geographies. We also take into account the size of the language audience, the geographic distribution of viewership, and cultural patterns of content consumption. In practice, the international viewership of our content is driven by specific audiences rather than by a single national market. For Ukrainian-language content, this is primarily the Ukrainian diaspora and viewers who are culturally aligned with it. The same applies to our Spanish-language content, which is predominantly consumed across Latin America — even when part of that audience is physically located in the US. Looking at “US RPMs” as a universal benchmark is therefore too simplistic a way to assess real revenue potential.

We operate across three main sources of international digital revenue. The first one is international viewership of Ukrainian-language content. The second one is the translation and adaptation of our formats into other languages. Both streams are already active and scaling.

The third and most complex direction is producing content specifically for foreign audiences. Creating content “for Americans” in a classical sense is not realistic for us, because the cultural and mental distance remains significant. The most universal format in this context is short-form content, which works through emotion, pace, and mechanics rather than deep cultural specificity, enabling faster alignment with global trends.

International TV franchises may perform very well, but they are often expensive and rely on licensed or rented content, and at times, a portion of the revenue goes to rights holders. That makes them successful projects, but not yet a stable, long-term replacement for the core broadcast business. Over time, however, it is reasonable to expect a tipping point where non-broadcast revenues begin to outweigh broadcast, and I believe this shift is likely to happen within the next few years.


You're producing content for international audiences and original vertical series for partners like HOLYWATER. How does the creative and production process differ when you are no longer creating for a domestic Ukrainian viewer? What are the biggest challenges in crafting stories that are culturally agnostic yet still compelling?

When we work with international audiences and vertical original series, the key difference is not culture but technology and dramaturgy.

Vertical content operates by a completely different set of rules. It does not come from television logic, but rather from comics and manga. The storytelling is incredibly dense: short scenes, constant cliffhangers, and continuous emotional momentum. Every episode must end with a sharp turn that immediately pushes the viewer into the next one – again and again. Attention is the core currency, and the format is built around retaining it second by second.

This mechanism is essentially universal. It works across countries and cultural contexts because it does not rely on national codes or local references. Instead, it is built around basic human emotions – betrayal, choice, danger, survival, and desire. These are stories that do not require translation at the level of meaning, which is why they scale globally so effectively.

The real challenges emerge at the production level. International audiences expect international casting: English-speaking actors, diverse backgrounds, and faces that do not feel tied to a single geography. Global viewers want universal stories embodied by universal characters. As a result, our projects increasingly involve actors from different countries, often with experience in international productions.

So, the difference between producing for a domestic Ukrainian audience and for an international audience is not a shift in mindset, but in product logic. It is about a different pace, a different dramatic structure, and a different way of working with attention. Ultimately, this is less about cultural adaptation and more about mastering the technology of storytelling itself.


Your work for HOLYWATER and commercial projects for international brands suggests you are now selling your production expertise as a service. Is this a deliberate strategy to turn Starlight Production into a B2B vendor for global clients, and how significant a revenue stream do you expect this to become?

Yes, this is a deliberate direction for us, but we approach it very pragmatically. In practice, production often operates as a B2B business: you either produce content on commission or you develop original IP and then look for distribution.

To us, offering production expertise as a service to international clients is not a scale statement, but a way to gradually build experience, test new markets, and understand where this model can realistically work for us. At this stage, it is part of an exploratory process rather than a fully formed business pillar.

Working with international brands and partners is important not only for revenue but also for positioning. A global client is a strong signal of quality and trust. It tells the market that you can be relied on for complex, large-scale projects. In that sense, these collaborations are a long-term investment: they open doors to new markets, partnerships, and opportunities that are simply not accessible within a purely local context.

It is also important to stress that we are not selling “video production” in a narrow sense. Our offering goes far beyond execution. It includes format and script development, production services, the design of production workflows, and working with technology-driven and emerging content forms.

Starlight Scenery brings expertise in creating highly complex props and scenic elements not only for film and television, but also for immersive exhibitions, theatres across Europe, and cyber arenas globally, including projects in the US. In the past, the team has also produced props for Cirque du Soleil performances. Their work operates at a level that is fully competitive on the global market.

At the same time, Starlight Rental provides full technical and production support for events of any scale. Most recently, the team returned from Luxembourg, where they delivered production services for the Eurovision national selection, and they are now preparing the Ukrainian national selection for the public broadcaster.

Both companies work with a broad range of clients and operate as successful businesses in their own right. Their expertise and international experience are an important part of the wider transformation we are undergoing, helping us expand our capabilities beyond content production.

Given the current objective limitations of the Ukrainian market due to the war and economic conditions, scaling our expertise beyond national borders is a way to remove that ceiling and grow Starlight Production globally.

In terms of revenue expectations, I see this stream as complementary rather than substitutive in the near term. It will not replace our core production business, but it will become an increasingly important pillar, both financially and strategically, as part of a more diversified and resilient model.


How are you leveraging AI and other technologies to reduce production costs and increase efficiency across your slate of projects, from local series to global formats?

We use AI not as an experiment, but as a working tool embedded into our daily production processes.

The first and most immediate impact is in script and development work. AI supports structural analysis, helps explore narrative solutions, assists with factchecking, and significantly simplifies work with large volumes of material. For example, transcribing hundreds of hours of raw footage and turning it into a searchable text base that writers and editors can work with efficiently. What used to be either very expensive or painfully slow has become manageable.

At the production level, AI helps us replace or optimize traditionally costly processes. We use it to generate visual references instead of full-scale photo shoots, to develop character looks, assist with color correction, improve image quality, and upscale content from Full HD to 4K, automatic clipping into short-form formats for the platform, + graphics/package generation: previews, references, storyboards. We also apply AI to translation and adaptation into other languages, metadata generation, casting analysis, and matching profiles across large talent databases. All of this reduces costs and speeds up decision-making without compromising quality.

A separate and increasingly important area is analytics. We use AI to assess the monetization potential of projects before investing in content adaptation. For example, through pairwise comparison models that do not try to “predict a hit,” but instead identify which projects share key characteristics with formats that have already performed well. This does not guarantee success, but it meaningfully reduces risk.

To us, AI is not a replacement for people. It is a tool that allows teams to think faster, test hypotheses earlier, and make mistakes at a lower cost. In a high-risk environment, that combination of speed, efficiency, and risk reduction is critical.


Looking ahead to 2026, what does a "stable" or "successful" Ukrainian production market look like to you? Is it a return to the pre-2022 model, or have the changes of the last few years fundamentally and permanently reshaped the industry's structure?

To me, a stable and prosperous Ukrainian production market in 2026 is not a return to the pre-2022 model. The industry has already been structurally reshaped, and there is no realistic path back.

The sheer number of projects produced no longer measures success. It is measured by ownership of IP and by the ability to build formats that can return for multiple seasons. I often think of it as a “second purchase effect”: if a project is commissioned once, then again, and then a third or fourth time, it means it truly works and creates long-term value.

The critical shift is moving from being a content producer based on someone else’s format to being an owner of intellectual property. IP ownership enables real distribution, multi-platform monetization, and international scalability. Without that, production remains transactional and fragile.

A successful production company of the future can create IP designed to live beyond a single cycle – adaptable across platforms, repeatable over time, and competitive not only in Ukraine but internationally.

To us at Starlight Production, success in this new reality looks very specific within that framework. It means operating as a modern production platform with a strong Ukrainian identity, capable of turning ideas into commercially viable stories that capture attention across multiple distribution channels.

Just as importantly, success means being a place where the strongest professionals want to work – and where they can grow, experiment, and build long-term value together.