{"id":10527,"date":"2018-12-18T11:06:01","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T16:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/eccho-rights-fredrik-af-malmborg-3\/"},"modified":"2018-12-19T09:36:42","modified_gmt":"2018-12-19T14:36:42","slug":"eccho-rights-fredrik-af-malmborg-1218","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/eccho-rights-fredrik-af-malmborg-1218\/","title":{"rendered":"Eccho Rights’ Fredrik af Malmborg"},"content":{"rendered":"
TV Drama\u00a0caught up with Fredrik af Malmborg, the managing director of Eccho Rights, to hear about what’s driving the company’s business around the world.<\/em><\/p>\n With bases in Stockholm, Istanbul, Madrid, Seoul and Manila, Eccho Rights has emerged as a leading supplier of international drama series, having licensed more than 15,000 hours to clients worldwide in the last year. CJ ENM today announced it is taking a majority stake in the organization as the Korean media giant looks to build its presence in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.\u00a0af Malmborg says, “CJ ENM is the ideal partner for Eccho Rights in our ambition to build on our business models in television drama for the future. Our experience in the Turkish and Western drama market creates a very solid link to Korea and the rest of Asia. To be a part of CJ ENM will enable us to grow and to develop an even stronger offering to TV producers worldwide.”\u00a0 TV DRAMA: <\/strong>You have built a strong business in Turkish dramas. Do they continue to perform well for you? What is really amazing is the success in Spain in the last year. Fatmag\u00fcl <\/em>outperformed everything else, and now we have Ezel<\/em> on air. We have sold Stiletto Vendetta<\/em> and Brave and Beautiful<\/em> to Mediaset. So there are two channels, Nova and Mediaset, airing Turkish dramas in Spain, with very strong results. That is very promising. Spain is the rising star in Turkish drama in Western Europe. And we still have a daily series on SVT in Sweden.<\/p>\n TV DRAMA: <\/strong>What are your other primary sources of drama series? TV DRAMA: <\/strong>Do your clients prefer dubbed dramas to subtitled ones? TV DRAMA: <\/strong>What are your main priorities for 2019? The managing director talks about what’s driving the company’s business around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":10528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,70],"tags":[2650,490,2539],"class_list":["post-10527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-cj-enm","tag-eccho-rights","tag-fredrik-af-malmborg","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\n
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\nAF MALMBORG: <\/strong>They still perform extraordinarily well. Latin America is still strong. Asia is very promising. There are lots of new markets coming up, like Bangladesh, and Indonesia is coming back. The cloud in the sky in the Turkish case is they are struggling with the fluctuation in their currency, so the whole market is a bit turbulent. That means it\u2019s a little bit hard to finance [shows] and many of the broadcasters who normally pay the whole budget are struggling with their advertising revenues. So it\u2019s a bit of trouble in the home market, but the international market is still strong.<\/p>\n
\nAF MALMBORG: <\/strong>Our two main sources are Turkey and Scandinavia. Nordic drama is doing well for us. We had Conspiracy of Silence<\/em>, we have a new show called Honour<\/em>, with four leading actresses in Sweden. Russia has always been close to our hearts. Trotsky <\/em>sold to Netflix and we\u2019ve done a number of different deals. Our next big focus is Korean series. We\u2019ve been doing lots of adaptations but we\u2019re looking at doing more. There are lots of Korean adaptations in Turkey. We\u2019re also doing some Scandinavian scripts\u2014we sold Nurses <\/em>to a number of countries. We\u2019re doing ten adaptations per year around the world.<\/p>\n
\nAF MALMBORG: <\/strong>Most countries are dubbing. We\u2019re dubbing a thousand hours a year to Spanish from Turkish series. The financing and control of the language assets is getting more and more important. Turkish drama is growing quite a lot in Africa, for example. It\u2019s always a bit of a hurdle to finance the dubbing but once you have it then it goes much easier and you can make a number of smaller deals. And owning a dubbing studio is a good business nowadays.<\/p>\n
\nAF MALMBORG: <\/strong>An interesting trend is the rise of Spain as a production country. It\u2019s very vibrant. Countries like Turkey and Spain are becoming global production hubs. We are selling El Accidente<\/em>, which is doing well. It takes one smash hit like Money Heist<\/em> to open people\u2019s eyes. Turkish drama is very important for us. In Nordic drama we are signing up a number of series. It\u2019s a trendsetting source country. And Korea will be super interesting in 2019. We\u2019ll do much more there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"