International disruptors: “Another Love” producers Tims & B Productions reflect on local successes, the historical impact of “Magnificent Century” and why Turkish television continues to excel

Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, an article in which we highlight key leaders and companies outside the US that are disrupting the foreign market. This week we talk to Turkish TV star Tims & B Productions. The company is behind the release of a new drama Another love in Mipcom last month and Selin Arat, the company’s director of international operations, reveals what the next steps are for the prolific producer and why Turkish TV content will continue to excel on the international stage.

When rival producers Timur Savcı and Burak Sağyaşar decided to join their two production companies – Savcı’s Tims Productions and Sağyaşar’s Bi Yapım – in 2017, a merger between two of Turkey’s most famous television content creators took place. Savcı was the producer of the drama of the Ottoman period Beautiful centurya global phenomenon largely credited as the catalyst for the country’s television boom, as producer and actor Sağyaşar created the wildly popular comedy-drama Hayatwhich was broadcast in more than 30 countries worldwide.

Over the past five years, the company has become one of the most successful production companies in Turkey, producing a range of genres ranging from drama, fantasy, dystopia and melodrama for linear broadcasters and global platforms. Last month, the company unveiled its latest local success during Mipcom Another love, which premiered on Fox Turkey in September to rave reviews. The show that reunites Hayat Starring Hande Erçel and Burak Deniz and distributed by Global Agency, the film tells the story of a presenter with dissociative identity disorder and a prosecutor who become embroiled in a relationship filled with passion and tension as they both try to escape the dark uncovering truth that uncovers a secret. which must be revealed. Serial killers.

“Their on-screen chemistry is almost palpable,” Selin Arat, Director of International Operations at Tims & B, says of the lead actors. “Turkish dramas can sometimes become repetitive because of their subject matter or the way they handle a particular product or subject, but as a company trying to innovate itself and the genres it creates, we wanted to represent that dark side . The game because our author [Ethem Özışık] is so good with subjects like this.”

In recent years, problems with mental health have arisen in Turkey, says Arat Another love is the “first Turkish series in which a main character suffers from split personality disorder.”

“Turkish dramas deal more and more with these issues, but it is very difficult to deal with a split personality and it will be a challenge for us, but that is precisely why it is so exciting and stimulating,” says Arat. “It is essentially a Turkish drama, but without losing the love element. In this sense it is about more western dramas. There are other crime thriller elements that we wanted to try to work with.

And it worked. The first and second episodes of Another love was the most-watched series among the commercial audience on the day it aired, generating nearly 300,000 tweets. (Read more about Another loveselected for Deadline’s Global Breakout this week, here ).

Plus the company’s critically acclaimed drama series Bitter landsThe film follows a legendary love that begins in 1970s Istanbul and progresses through trials of evil, ambition and tyranny in southern Turkey, enthralling audiences for four seasons. It was distributed in more than 55 countries around the world and was a hit not only in countries such as Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, which have long acquired Turkish content, but also in more Western European countries such as like z like Spain and Italy. . In the latter case, the series broadcast on Mediaset achieved an average market share of 2.7 million viewers, with an audience share of 24%.

More projects like fantasy drama Shahmaran and dystopian drama Hot skull became huge hits for Netflix when they aired on the streamer this year and last year. Both projects made it into Netflix’s top 10 non-English language TV series.

A beautiful story

In fact, there have been a number of recent successes for Tims & B since Savcı and Sağyaşar merged their companies six years ago, but the company is built on a very solid foundation.

“I first came to Tims because of my film background,” says Arat, who started at Tims in 2009. “I was supposed to set up a film division within the company, but my boss at the time said to me, ‘Selin, we’re working on this project called Beautiful century and it’s big and we can’t deal with movies now “The rest is TV history.”

The epic series, based on the life and court of Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire’s longest-reigning sultan, broke Turkish television records when it aired in 2011: more than a third of prime-time viewers watched it 90 -year series watched. year-long TV series. weekly episodes of minutes.

The program was broadcast in more than 140 countries and watched by more than 500 million people worldwide. Arat recalls that they were “very, very excited” when they first received a request from Russia, “which has not had a license for anything from Turkey for years.”

“They wanted to try it with a few episodes, so we gave it to them, and it became such a huge success that it caused an outcry from the audience when they had to stop airing it because they had to wait for the rest of the series. “The episodes of our company,” she says.

Today, Beautiful century is still considered one of the most influential and popular Turkish television shows of this century due to its popular cast, including Halit Ergenç and Meryem Uzerli, and its high production values. And although Arat does not disclose specific figures, she notes that it is the most expensive Turkish series of all time.

To continue to leverage this intellectual property while continuing its mission to be a pioneer in the local and global entertainment sector, Tims & B partnered with Metaverse platform The Sandbox earlier this year to facilitate the launch Beautiful century in the virtual game atmosphere. After that, this is the second series to enter the sandbox metaverse The living dead. After launching in Paris this summer, players can now create their own experiences with both original and established characters and worlds.

On the strength of this intellectual property, Arat says today: “I now understand that all the work we put in has paid off. This is one of our evergreen projects and is still being licensed. It’s just really a phenomenon. In terms of visual quality, given the year of production, it may not be as high quality as other historical dramas around the world, but it has such a powerful story and such a powerful way of conveying the story that it is the worth watching. it still reaches people.”

Next steps

Turkey has long been one of the world’s biggest exporters of television content, with markets such as Latin America, South America, the Middle East and the Balkans historically among the biggest buyers of series from the country. Turkish series, often referred to as telenovelas due to their dramatic style and length, have long enjoyed popularity in Spanish-speaking markets because their novelas, often focused on families and dramatic characters, appeal to Spanish-speaking audiences. But it is important, says Arat, that the Turkish industry does not rest on its laurels.

“Turkish series are still number two in the world,” she says. “But we have very strong competition from Spain and Latin America who are again putting on top-of-the-line performances. So we are dealing with competition. I must also say that the introduction of digital platforms in the Turkish market shook things up a bit.”

She refers to streamers’ deep pockets, which sometimes allow them to pay higher salaries to cast and crew. In Turkey, Arat said, programs are typically recorded for an entire week, just before they are broadcast the following week.

“No one does this in the rest of the world, everyone records episodes one by one, puts them aside, edits them and starts broadcasting when everything is finished, but we run a marathon every week,” she says.

But she suspects that the switch to linear television may return. “The boom may come back because people accept more linear television, and here we can actually reflect the Turkish DNA of television dramas that work so well around the world,” she says. “When you get into the digital platform space, the game changes a little bit because the length of the episodes are shorter and because you’re on a global platform and you have all these different ideas that you want to play with, but that. ” lead you away from your true core and your innate values. Sometimes that can ruin the magic a bit.

Tims & B will then develop a new period drama based on a best-selling novel. According to the company, it will become and even surpass the highest-budget Turkish series of all time Beautiful century.

Although Arat cannot reveal much yet, she says that due to the size of the budget it must be a multinational co-production.

“There isn’t a single streamer that can finance this project alone, so it has to be a co-production because the scale of the project is so big,” she says of the new project. “But if we succeed, it will definitely be our next hit Beautiful century.”