Eccho Rights’ Fredrik af Malmborg

Empowering creativity has long been the mantra at Eccho Rights. The company has been connecting with producers early on in the development process, offering advice, market insight and business know-how to help get projects off the ground—and then licensing the shows to as many platforms as possible. While Eccho Rights is still riding high on the success of Turkish dramas, it is also scouting for new scripted concepts further afield, with India and Korea emerging as two key creative hubs. Fredrik af Malmborg, the managing director of Eccho Rights, talks to World Screen about the changing nature of the international drama business.

WS: What has been the strategy for building out the company’s global footprint?
AF MALMBORG: Turkey is very important for us, as we have tremendous success with Turkish drama. We are a Swedish company, so we are doing more and more dramas from Western Europe. We also see two growth areas. One is Korea, where we are adapting some scripts in the country and from the country. We did Ice Adonis a few years ago in Ukraine and now we have a few different Korean adaptations, including in Turkey. Last year we had two Turkish adaptations of Korean scripts. We think that Korea and Turkey have a lot of similarities in terms of the structure of their programs, so we see lots of opportunities. We hired Deborah Youn, based in Seoul, to oversee the Asian office. We are looking at adapting and selling our titles there, as well as building our business in distributing Korean dramas. We also hired Laura Miñarro in the Madrid office to oversee co-production and scripted projects. She will work with Deborah, and we will look more at developing co-productions, at being more involved to go deeper into projects and serving producers better. This is key, as the financing for drama is changing from the traditional linear broadcasters to more co-productions and more VOD deals.

So, we are growing! To become a bigger part of the global drama market, it’s important to develop our business in each region.

India is also interesting for us, even though we haven’t hired someone there yet. We have two scripted adaptations currently in India. A remake of Fatmagül went on air a few months ago on Star Plus, and Forbidden Love, which is a big hit from Turkey, is also in production for the same channel right now.

WS: Are you also looking for more partnerships with producers in new markets?
AF MALMBORG: We have been working with Ay Yapim in Turkey for a long time. We work with Zebra in Spain. They are adapting the Belgium format The Clinic. We work with Sreda in Russia. Their series Silver Spoon has done well for us. The approach of working closely with producers and empowering them is important for us, and we have been very fortunate to work with a number of them in exciting and developing markets. Of course, as the business grows we will continue to look for projects and partners in further markets. One of the key lessons we have learned as independent, international distributors is that great content can come from anywhere.

WS: What sort of expertise can Eccho Rights offer in terms of facilitating co-productions?
AF MALMBORG: We work with producers to help them finance their productions and then to sell them all over the world. I believe in having one main producer who is the creative lead. If you go in as a client to share the risk early, then it makes sense that you get a bit of equity. The model of sharing the equity and finding different investment partners, together with the local broadcaster, is something that we will see more of. There are a number of investment funds being set up. We are doing a big Canadian project right now that a number of pure investors are involved in, as well as one VOD channel and one broadcaster. Some of them are also getting equity in the project. Getting the financing together to make a production happen, then figuring out the share of equity according to the risk that is involved is actually not that different from just distributing a title, which is why we feel that Eccho Rights is perfectly placed to develop this business. That is an area that we will develop quite a lot in the coming years.

WS: Is drama what’s driving the business at present?
AF MALMBORG: Oh yes! It makes up the vast majority of our business. It is in an interesting phase right now, though. There are so many different platforms and broadcasters that are investing in drama that the output is pretty massive. People have very high expectations for the dramas on the international stage. If there are that many dramas being produced, it will be harder and harder to reach the high standards of the international tastemakers: the viewers. Also, we see broadcasters spending huge amounts of money on their own productions, but they also need successful acquisitions. So, the output is big at the moment, but that also drains the international market a little bit and puts pressure on the sale of ready-mades.

WS: Is Turkish drama still performing quite well and selling into new markets?
AF MALMBORG: Latin America is very strong for Turkish drama at the moment. Insider is airing in Chile with very good ratings. Brave and Beautiful premiered in Mexico this summer. Elif, which is an incredible success across the region, premiered in Argentina, attracting 4 million viewers in a 3 p.m. slot! Italy is catching up, and Eastern Europe has also done well. Indonesia is buying Turkish dramas, too, and we recently announced two new sales in Malaysia, which is an exciting market.

WS: Are you seeing more interest in Korean dramas? What about Indian drama series?
AF MALMBORG: Both of those markets are super interesting to scout from; they are very creative hubs. They have a style and length of production that is appealing to worldwide audiences, or at least to those outside of Western Europe and the U.S. We are representing a number of scripts from both Korea and India. Turkey, Korea and India are three markets that are seeing a lot of growth in their drama businesses.

We also have a number of great projects from Scandinavia at the moment. We have an amazing project with the Swedish production company Mountain Dog called Heder, which means “honor” in Swedish. That is going into production in January. It has an A-plus cast and very strong concept. We have a number of other projects in development from the region that are also very exciting. Scandinavia has been and continues to be quite trend­setting with its style of storytelling. It’s very international.

WS: Has the proliferation of niche SVOD services come as a boon to the international drama business?
AF MALMBORG: Looking at Korea or Russia, for example, there is very strong growth in the number of VOD services. Many of them have a revenue-sharing model. In Western Europe, you have SVODs and platforms like YouTube. I think we will see more and more SVOD services being launched in the coming years, and that means they will probably put series on a number of different platforms more exclusively. In turn, this means a number of different revenue sources, but over a longer period of time. Korea already has six or seven fiercely competing VOD services. I think that will spread to other countries as well.

On the creative side, we saw in Turkey this year that the series Phi—the first original production for the VOD platform Puhu TV—was somewhat more edgy than the traditional content produced for linear TV. Producers, directors, writers and actors are really liberated by the opportunities presented by making a series for an online audience, so I think we will continue to see more creative risks taken moving forward.

WS: How is the demand for scripted formats?
AF MALMBORG: Scripted is more popular than ever! We have done 25 scripted remakes in the last two years. That is a big area for us. We are looking for good scripts and are launching new versions all the time. It is hard to develop a good script, and more producers are realizing that. They see the value of adapting a script. With all the production going on, it’s very hard to find strong scriptwriters.

For The End, which is originally from Turkey, we have a Spanish version coming up this fall, a Dutch version that was a great success last year, and a Russian version also in production. We did Nurses, which is from Finland, in Sweden last year and have a second season coming up this fall. The Swedish version is also airing in both Denmark and Norway.

We have another adaptation of a Korean script, Tears of Heaven, from CJ E&M, launching in Turkey. It will be one of our major launches for MIPCOM.