Inter Medya continues to expand its international footprint through a diverse portfolio that spans long-running dramas, mini-series, films, formats, and now vertical dramas.
For our ATF 2025 issue, the company’s President Hasret Özcan and Senior Sales, Acquisition and Strategy Manager Pelin Koray join us to reflect on a year of remarkable growth, share insights into emerging trends across global markets, talk about their newest title Halef, and discuss Inter Medya’s evolving strategy for Asia.
- Inter Medya continues to expand its international footprint through a diverse portfolio that spans long-running dramas, mini-series, films, formats, and now vertical dramas.
- Pelin Koray: “We have produced our very first micro-drama, Boardroom to Bedroom, which has 55 episodes, 2 minutes each. We know that Asia is the biggest market for verticals, and we are willing to find partners for our vertical content. Turkish Vertical combines Turkish Drama DNA with verticals’ easy-to-consume storytelling, and we believe it will be appealing for a wide audience.”
As we approach the end of 2025, how would you describe this year overall for Inter Medya?
HASRET ÖZCAN: 2025 has been a year of remarkable growth and achievement for Inter Medya. We continued to strengthen our global partnerships and broaden our international reach. This year, our focus was on deepening relationships with long-standing partners while also exploring new regions and business models. We enriched our catalogue with several outstanding titles, Halef and Eshref Ruya being among the most notable. At MIPCOM, we hosted one of the most talked-about events of the market, and our titles received recognition at prestigious international awards. While expanding our activities in distribution and co-productions, we also took our first steps into vertical drama production, a direction aligned with the evolving global content landscape. These collective accomplishments have reaffirmed Inter Medya’s position as one of Türkiye’s leading global content distributors. We are currently continuing to expand our catalogue, engaging in ongoing discussions for new co-productions, and exploring entry into additional regions. At the same time, we are investing in our company’s technological infrastructure to enhance efficiency and innovation. Our goal for 2026 is to build on the strong momentum we achieved this year and reach even greater milestones.
How was the global demand for Turkish content in 2025? Did you notice any emerging regional trends or shifts in buyer interest?
HASRET ÖZCAN: The global demand for Turkish content remains exceptionally strong, and increasingly diverse. While Latin America, Middle East, CIS and Eastern Europe continue to be key markets with consistent success, we have observed growing interest from Western Europe and Asia, in both long-form dramas and mini-series. Buyers are now prioritizing powerful storytelling and emotional authenticity, and Turkish productions continue to deliver exactly that. Vertical dramas have also become increasingly sought after, and we’re proud to see successful examples emerging from Türkiye, including Boardroom to Bedroom, a production we have undertaken. These projects, grounded in the strength of Turkish storytelling and production expertise, are poised to make a significant global impact. We believe they will further amplify the influence of Turkish dramas, films, and mini-series across international markets.
You launched Halef and continued the international journey of Eshref Ruya, which remains one of Türkiye’s top-rated dramas. How has the global response been to both titles since MIPCOM?
HASRET ÖZCAN: The response has been exceptional. Halef made a powerful debut at MIPCOM, generating tremendous buzz among global buyers and industry media. Its inclusion in The Wit’s Fresh TV Fiction selection, a showcase of the most promising new series of the season, was a source of great pride for us. Halef stands out as one of the most prominent Turkish dramas of the year. Following its strong performance in Türkiye, we are finalizing a number of international sales that will soon be officially announced. Meanwhile, Eshref Ruya continues to captivate audiences both domestically and internationally. It is currently one of the most-watched and most-discussed series in Türkiye, and it has already been sold to nearly every key territory worldwide, achieving outstanding ratings and audience engagement. Both Halef and Eshref Ruya embody the essence of Turkish storytelling, emotional depth, stellar performances, and high production values, and their success has opened new doors for us while reinforcing the global prestige of Turkish drama.
Pelin Koray: “We have produced our very first micro-drama, Boardroom to Bedroom, which has 55 episodes, 2 minutes each. We know that Asia is the biggest market for verticals, and we are willing to find partners for our vertical content. Turkish Vertical combines Turkish Drama DNA with verticals’ easy-to-consume storytelling, and we believe it will be appealing for a wide audience.”
We’re here at ATF 2025. How do you view the growing interest from the Asian market, and how important is the region in your overall distribution strategy?
PELİN KORAY: Asia has always been a great potential for Inter Medya’s content sales, both due to its extensive geographical size and its rich cultural diversity. In addition to Southeast Asian countries where Turkish content is already popular for an existing audience, there are also markets such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and China that are still relatively “close” to non-Asian content. Therefore, we approach each of them with different sales strategies. We can say that for SAARC region long running drama series are at the core of our licensing activities. In India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia there is a growing interest for Turkish family dramas, and love stories. To be specific, family dramas with kid leads are very popular. We receive lots of positive feedback for our drama series Can Bağı (Heartstrings) from our potential buyers in these countries. Also, our family drama / love story Siyah Kalp (Valley of Hearts) and Aldatmak (Deception) is appealing for the audience. Lately, we realize that the digital platforms and AVOD licensing is becoming a common trend in the region, but our priority is always to license our content to TV channels, as we think the most loyal and local audience is the TV audience itself. On the other hand, for East Asia countries, historical dramas, horror movies, and mini-series (also known as new generation Turkish Series) are more interesting to our buyers. Our strategy in that region is to introduce high quality Turkish content regardless of its type, we believe this will lead us to enter into this region with our traditional drama series. For these regions, we are also focusing on format sales; we closed a deal for adaptation rights of Ruhun Duymaz (Love Undercover) in Korea, and we are excited for its launch in the upcoming year. We hope to find new production partners both for our unscripted and scripted formats.
Which titles or genres in your lineup tend to attract the most interest in the Asian market?
PELİN KORAY: This year, we are excited to bring a brand new type, which is Turkish vertical dramas. We have produced our very first micro-drama, Boardroom to Bedroom, which has 55 episodes, 2 minutes each. We know that Asia is the biggest market for verticals, and we are willing to find partners for our vertical content. Turkish Vertical combines Turkish Drama DNA with verticals’ easy-to-consume storytelling, and we believe it will be appealing for a wide audience. Our catalogue is mostly composed of best performing, long running drama series. We recently launched Halef, a heartfelt drama that shows the different faces of love between rural traditions and modern life. It is one of the best performing title of the season, together with Eşref Rüya (Eshref Ruya), which is on its second season, and has become a huge hit. We will also be focusing our mini series catalogue; with over thirty mini series composed of 8-20 episodes, we receive interest from VODs in Korea, Philippines, Japan, Thailand and Taiwan for these relatively shorter and edgier titles. We expect to close a deal for Modern Woman (Modern Kadın) after ATF, as it is a common story about a young woman who looks for love trying to find the balance between her professional and personal life. We also look forward to discuss our movies from several different genres from horror to comedy, and have already been licensed in Asia. This year, we also added a English language movie, namely, In Algorithm We Trust. We also hope to have further sales for Chasing the Wind (Rüzgara Bırak), and a successful Turkish Adaptation of the Korean movie, Miracle in Cell No: 7 (7. Koğuştaki Mucize). Last but not least, we have a big unscripted format catalogue, besides talent shows such as Crossover, we have reality dating shows, cooking shows and studio-based game shows. For the territory, I believe our game show The Box Challenge is very suitable, as it combines physical games with trivia questions.
Finally, what are your goals and expectations for ATF 2025?
PELİN KORAY: As always, we are very happy to be attending ATF, which is one of the biggest events that brings us together with our Asian partners. As mentioned above, depending on each territory, we have a different sales strategy and sales target. For SAARC region, our expectation is to close deals for our drama series with FTA channels. We are also hoping to find new local SVOD partners, and extend the existing business relationships.
This exclusive interview was featured in Episode Magazine’s ATF 2025 issue.
