Anton Romalijskij, Sales Director at Abacus Media Rights, spoke to ttvnews about the recently launched company and its initiatives for Mipcom.
In March of this year, with its sights set on Miptv, British distributor Abacus Media Rights, owned by Amcomri Media Group, was launched on the international market.
And while almost half a year has passed since then, the company is still a relatively new player, especially considering this strange 2020 marked by the coronavirus.
To learn more about its offer, objectives and news for Mipcom, ttvnews spoke with Anton Romalijskij, Sales Director at Abacus Media Rights.
“Abacus Media Rights distributes a diverse range of premium programming across scripted series, documentary series and features as well as non-fiction series”, the executive explained. “In short, we distribute entertainment that counts.”
However, since its recent launch, the company’s catalog has had a higher incidence of documentary and non-scripted content. “But our focus is also the scripted segment,” said the executive.
The company will participate in Mipcom Online+ with several titles, such as Canadian series Trickster, the documentary Diana: The Interview That Shook The World, British true crime series In The Footsteps of Killers, the documentary Lennon’s Last Weekend, the British docuseries The Real Manhunter; the real crime documentary Meet, Marry, Murder and the documentary series Inside the Mind…
The catalog also features true crime docuseries The Night Caller (4 x 60′), an Australian original production by Stan that has just been sold to Sundance Now in the US and Canada, Sky Crime in the UK and DR in Denmark.
Regarding its focus on the international market, Romalijskij explained that the Abacus sales team works with all territories, including Latin America and Spain.
“Latin America and Spain remain important territories for us and since the launch of Abacus in March this year we have signed multiple deals in these territories,” he said.
Indeed, since the distributor first launched, it has already landed sales with companies such as Movistar+ in Spain (which acquired Lennon’s Last Weekend), Directv Latin America (People You May Know), Discovery Latin America (Outback Lockdown) and Globoplay Brazil (Trickster, People You May Know, Whitney Can I Be Me).
And the same is true from the point of view of acquisitions. “Our acquisitions strategy also sees us looking internationally for content.”
Lastly, Romalijskij pointed out that in addition to “traditional” distribution, Abacus is currently looking for “opportunities” together with producers for other financing models such as pre-sales or developments.
