Izzet Pinto: 'Our stories are stronger and more engaging than ever'

According to Izzet Pinto, CEO, the company is betting strongly on the pick up the very best content for both formats and dramas to include our catalogue, ‘with new formats and dramas, and acquisitions getting stronger every single day’.

Among the top dramas that the company is bringing to Cannes are TİMS&B Productions’ Dangerously In Love, the story about extraordinary love between a man forced to commit a crime in order to prove his father’s innocence and a police officer who is chasing him; Hope, which centers on a pratogonist that lives a meaningless life until the day he learns that he has a young daughter stricken with leukemia; Queens, an English – language period drama which tells the story of two powerful women, fighting each other in a man’s world: Elizabeth I of England (Rebecca Scott, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) and Mary Stuart of Scotland (Olivia Chenery, Brotherhood).

Heartbeat is set in a fictional private hospital in Istanbul and focuses on fictional lives of doctors who each struggle to balance their personal lives with the hectic work in the hospital, while Black Pearl is the next big melodrama project of the company.

‘We will be launching 8 new formats at MIPCOM, which 5 of them are already being broadcasted with huge successes: Cash or Splash, In and Out, Beat The Wheel, Open Call, What The F*ck, Momsters, My Life Is A Scenario and Marriage Life Experiment. Cash or Splash has aired on Turkey for 4 seasons, and What The F*ck was the biggest hit format in Turkey during the summer season’, adds Pinto.

In terms of expansion, the company is getting stronger and stronger in Latin America: ‘The demand to Turkish content is still very aggressive in the territory. In Chile, Perù, Panama, and Uruguay last year, at least four out the top 15 shows in all categories were Turkish, while not a single one was American. We are also growing in Africa, and adding new territories. We are focusing mostly in Asia including Thailand, Malaysia and India’, remarks the executive.

‘Turkish content is still in its growing phase. Production quality is getting better; the stories are getting stronger and more engaging. Therefore the demand is not slowing down. We are sure that Turkish content’s power will continue at least 3-4 years more’.

‘Our goal is to deliver these original, unique, outstanding and innovative projects all around the world to their new audiences. We do also aim to keep our name as “the world’s leading ‘independent’ distributor” with our content, with the aggressive marketing strategies of us and with the successful team which is also getting bigger with new ambitious team members’.

‘Additionally, this year formats sales saw a big growth and our some of the new titles we’re launching are application based games. Our one of the main goals accordingly is to invest on these project based mobile applications’, completes Izzet Pinto.