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Sabbah: Al Hayba, a sensation across the MENA region
Cedars Art Production (Sabbah Brothers) confirmed the great success of it drama series Al Hayba (30x’60) broadcast in 12 countries across the MENA region reaching 116.7 million of persons. A second run of the series is ready to be broadcast soon on CEE’s networks.According to Meltwater, in one day more than 29 million persons were discussing episode 7. The TV series was premiered during the only high season month in the Arab countries, Ramadan, on a daily basis and collected an unprecedented word of mouth and success that touched the Arabic community, social media, advertisement and fashion (people started adopting the hair style of the main actors).
‘The series is soon to be released in global marketplace’, highlighted Rania Hadad, international sales manager. Broascast during all July it has an exclusive parallel first run on the pan-Arabic network MBC, MTV (Lebanon), Alsumaria (Iraq) and Tunisia.
A second run has already been sold and soon to be released on the CEE countries, which names has not been disclosed yet. ‘We are also promoting the series in the Americas with English subtitles’, adds Hadad.
Al Hayba collected a phenomenal reaction and TV rating across all the Arabic countries and all demographics despite the fact that it was competing with more than 50 TV series of A stars actors that were premiering at the same date. It manages to win the biggest share of the drama market covering 12 countries, according to GFK, MMS data becoming the most trending series for 30 days.
The success was expressed outside the TV screen: different companies adopted scenes from the series to bring more viewers to their websites, men started adopting the hair style of the actors.
Hadad: ‘It was the most discussed series among Arabic communities even in Canada, a true phenomenon. One of the reason is the very well-crafted personalities/cast, the realistic story, which depicts the reality of the village Al Hayba, located at the border between Syria and Lebanon’.
Viewers sympathize and fall in love with the Tribe Sheikh El Jabal, their love affairs and code of honor. The series offers a mixture of mafia, suspense moment with a smart twist, romance and code of honor. Following this huge success, and only after airing episode 16, major broadcasters commissioned and booked season 2 (30x’60), to be released on July 2018.