Country of Origin of Movies

[chicweb]

Hi all,

Let's say a movie was produced in the United States. Then it was doubled in Canada and the packaging was made in Canada.

Country of Origin for customs: United States?

Country of manufacture: Canada (Since it's the Canadian version?) or still the United States ?

The line is so thin with those kind of products, it's not easy to specify correctly.

I asked Gemini AI for some answers. It told me that the country where most of the scenes are filmed should be used as country of Origin and also the country of the company that produce the movie.

What do you do in case of DVD/VHS/BluRay ? Do you specify Canada as the CoO if it's the canadian version? Do you still specify United States if it was produced in the States ?

[chicweb]

As I search the web, it seem to be mostly the country of the company who produced the movie. No matter where it was filmed, dubbed, etc...

Curious about other sellers who are also selling those kind of products...

[flipistics]

My opinion (which might be wrong) is that customs only cares about where the physical content was manufactured and pressed (disc, maybe packaging, etc), not where the digital content was produced / filmed. If they cared about the latter, most movies would have dozens of countries, etc which wouldn't make sense with regards to customs.

Personally, if I can read something on the outside of the packaging that says "Made in Canada", I'm putting Canada on a customs form. That said, there's nothing wrong with not selling to a particular country if you're concerned.  Movies, at least in my experience, usually sell better in Canada anyway. I certainly wouldn't sell anything that was region 1 overseas. From experience, selling anything that ISN'T region 0 or 1 domestically is a bad idea too.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@flipistics wrote:

My opinion (which might be wrong) is that customs only cares about where the physical content was manufactured and pressed (disc, maybe packaging, etc), not where the digital content was produced / filmed. If they cared about the latter, most movies would have dozens of countries, etc which wouldn't make sense with regards to customs.

Personally, if I can read something on the outside of the packaging that says "Made in Canada", I'm putting Canada on a customs form. That said, there's nothing wrong with not selling to a particular country if you're concerned.  Movies, at least in my experience, usually sell better in Canada anyway. I certainly wouldn't sell anything that was region 1 overseas. From experience, selling anything that ISN'T region 0 or 1 domestically is a bad idea too.

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As a btw on "weird one's" desire to overhaul pretty much everything he is now floating tariffing the movie making process for movies made anywhere else beside the USA. I now call refer to him as the President that keeps on taking.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trump-us-film-industry-tariffs-1.7526419

[dinomitesales · Accepted solution]

There's was another post here a couple days ago about a similar topic so I'll copy/paste how I've been handling these:

I've been listing a lot of sealed DVDs lately. The vast majority of it doesn't specify a country of manufacture; some may say "Printed in US/Canada" but it's unclear if that's referring to just the packaging itself, like the case artwork or sleeve or whatnot. Regardless, if that's the only country mentioned on the exterior of the packaging then that's what I'm entering as the "country of origin" and I can't imagine anyone arguing the point.

Most of it just lists the address of the distributer of the DVD; again, if that's the only mention of a country on the exterior of the package then that's the country I'm entering as "country of origin". A lot of discs are pressed in Mexico too - occasionally you'll come across some printed blue text on the plastic of a media case that says "Disc Printed in Mexico" - if that's visible on the exterior of the case then I might put "Mexico" as the CoO, but if the only reference to Mexico is in tiny lettering on the underside of the disc (which I can't even see in the case of sealed media) that as far as I'm concerned thats irrelevant to any customs officials.

In any case, there is little to worry about at the moment, as I don't think any media distributed for the North American market is made in China. Just put the country that makes the most sense to you based on the information at hand. I sent out a $120 DVD box set to the States today; the only country mention on the packaging was "Distributed exclusively by Acorn Media, Silver Springs, MD." So I put "US" as the country of origin, as I have no other information to go off of. I'm not super concerned about it.

That aforementioned box set has crossed customs now. No issues.

As far as customs is concerned, there is no difference between a "country of origin" and a "country of manufacture". It's silly to consider the CoO as where the item was filmed - that is bad AI advice.

[chicweb]

Even if it said Made in Canada, that would be the country of manufacture, not the country of Origin (per Gemini AI).

Also, seen some answers on Quora about it. It seems that what is important is where the movie was produced.

Very difficult to have a real factual answer.

For the moment, its part of CUSMA, so sending to the states isnt very a problem. I'm sure Customs would also be understanding about Canadian version of US movies. The line is thin.

But if thing changes... That can get messy.

About Region 1. Ive sold many overseas. I always message and confirm first that customer understand.

Nowadays, theres a lot of multiregion devices and NTSC/PAL converters.

[ricarmic]

Until something happens to make me do otherwise, in my (stamp) world, I'm calling COO the country name on the stamp, some stamps for "colonies" were printed in other countries than the one on the stamp, especially in the "old" stuff, but I have a strong belief using the country name on the stamp as COO is probably going to be fine going forward. Time will tell.

[chicweb]

Oh well. I just asked again, and Gemini AI told me exactly like you said. Weird.

If Made in Canada, then CoO must be Canada, even if the movie is american. I will stick to that, then.

Those AIs cannot be trusted. 😉

[chicweb]

I think thats what I will do too.

Because sometime, its very difficult to know.

By providing the info available to us on the media (case/dvd/cassette), we are being honest with the best of our knowledge about the product.

But that line is so thin... (Produced in the states, filmed around the world, dubbed in many langages)...

I will have to trust the info on the cover. If none, the best of my knowledge.

[sapphyres-designer-jewellery]

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@ricarmic wrote:

Until something happens to make me do otherwise, in my (stamp) world, I'm calling COO the country name on the stamp, some stamps for "colonies" were printed in other countries than the one on the stamp, especially in the "old" stuff, but I have a strong belief using the country name on the stamp as COO is probably going to be fine going forward. Time will tell.

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I sell coins and stamps, doing the same thing. I don't want to try and explain to customs that the Royal Canadian Mint makes coins for 73 countries, and the Banknote people in Canada make tons of banknotes for different countries. You can find this information on Numista (coin collecting website).

I just go by what's stamped on the coin/stamp because that's what Customs is looking at, and unless it's China, it doesn't seem to matter for right now because of de minimis. When I ship stamps if it's just a single stamp set or two, it goes in a #10 envelope with postage stamps on the cover anyway and I doubt customs will be opening those.

C.