The Turkish company arrives to Mipcom celebrating its 30th anniversary, with new titles like Poison Ivy and Another Chance bolstering its powerful catalog.
It’s a special year for Inter Medya, the Turkish company that is celebrating its 30th anniversary by landing in Mipcom 2022 (Pavillion C12.C) as one of the most important Turkish distributors in the international market. A key player that has reached recurrent worldwide success with dramas for over a decade.
As a distributor, Inter Medya made part of the international boom of traditional Turkish content. Now, as a production company, it’s participating of the evolution towards a new generation of content that aims to conquer the streaming platforms.
Can Okan, founder & CEO, and Ahmet Ziyalar, president & COO of Inter Medya, talked to ttvnews about the evolution of the company in these 30 years.
Of all the company’s accomplishments during these 30 years; what are you most proud of?
Can Okan (C.O.): We are proud of the whole experience, including the good and the bad. All our experiences have turned us into a company that currently distributes Turkish content to more than 150 countries.
Ahmet Ziyalar (A.Z.): We always emphasize that not only we distribute content, but also Turkish culture to the world. This is what we are most proud of!
Broadly speaking, what were the most important moments for the company’s growth during these three decades?
C.O.: There have been many important moments, but I think it would take too long to list them all. To summarize: in its first ten years, Inter Medya’s basic market structure remained more or less the same, but the company soon found itself operating both inbound and outbound. From 2007 onwards, the nature of the content Inter Medya provides radically changed. Turkish TV series and feature films started to draw broad interest from international markets. With solid market demands, both locally and internationally, Inter Medya became an international company distributing content in over 110 countries. In 2016, we brought together a creative team and started to develop and produce entertainment, reality and game show formats.
A.Z.: In 2019 we established our production team and produced our first TV series. Later on, we invested on Inter Yapım as an independent production company. We can definitely say it is a new and exciting adventure for us. Inter Medya continues to expand the Turkish TV and film industry to foreign markets in a stable and reliable manner by undertaking the international distribution of both the content supplied by other production companies and Inter Yapım’s productions.
If you were able to talk with your past-selves from the time when you were starting with Inter Medya, what do you think will surprise them most about what the company has become?
C.O.: When I founded this company in 1992, the nature of the work we did was completely different. Perhaps the one thing that would surprise me the most would be knowing that what we would remarkably change from inbound to outbound. However, if I had known that Turkish TV series would improve so much and take great stories with excellent production level to the audience, I would have known that this great success of Turkish content in the international market would not have been a coincidence.
What kind of content will Inter Yapim focus on producing?
A.Z.: Our vision is to produce only for the local and international streaming services, not for mainstream broadcasters. We have named this kind of projects as “New Generation Turkish Series”. Short form projects produced for OTT platforms, podcasts and content for other new media will also take part in our production strategy. We have no intention at all to produce long ongoing Turkish Drama series since it demands special expertise and there are very experienced production houses already doing this in Turkey. We see an opportunity to produce content for the continuously emerging digital platforms both in our country and worldwide. We think that this kind of structure fits very well within the innovative, courageous and pioneering nature of Inter Medya.
How important is for Inter Medya to have been such an integral part of Turkish content’s growth around the world?
C.O.: Very important! We do this with great responsibility and enthusiasm. Inter Medya is not just a successful and modern content distributor, but also a powerful business developer with powerful business relationships and a consultant with 30 years of experience in the industry.
A.Z.: We believe that we are an important part of this boom, and even one of its pioneers. Besides, Inter Medya acts as a facilitator of many industrial transactions thanks to its geographical and political position.
Another Chance and Poison Ivy Lead a Powerful Catalogue for Mipcom
Poison Ivy
Focusing on Mipcom Cannes 2022, Inter Medya is introducing very attractive titles, like The Girl of the Green Valley, Aziz, Deep and the second season of Saygi. One of the new titles in Inter Medya’s catalog is Another Chance, a BKM production for Show TV. The series follows Sadi Payasli, Ankara’s indomitable bully, whose past will follow him to his job in Karabayır High School. There, his life will be divided between his love for Derya and his sense of justice and responsibility to take care of five convicted students from the reformatory.
From TMC Film, co-produced with Alim Yapim and broadcasted by StarTV, Inter Medya presents Poison Ivy (original title: Gecenin Ucunda), a drama that features a star-studded cast including Neslihan Atagül Doğulu, Kadir Doğulu, Sarp Levendoğlu and Zuhal Olcay. Adapted from Peride Celal’s best-selling novel of the same name, Poison Ivy is about Macide’s journey into a world she has never seen before, tested with love on her way to find herself.
Inter Medya also impresses with its feature films catalog. The noteworthy feature film Regardless (Her Şeye Rağmen) which will be released in theatres in February 2023.
Inter Medya executives stated that they will announce new hit titles during the event.
