By mena.tv - 12 September 2021 Having worked with several production companies around the world for many years, Marc Lorber, SVP for International Co-productions and Acquisitions at Lionsgate, spoke about the future of media production in the MENA region in Series Mania 2021. He stated that even though US, North America, and Europe are usually the main territories for their business, the Middle East has become a key emerging territory for Lionsgate. However, he noted that production in ME needs special treatment, “There is a diversity of countries, and there is a diversity of politics, religion, and economy. So, you can't just paint them all with the same brush.” Such diversity, along with the fact that more than 75% of the population in ME is under the age of 25 or 30, guarantees that the number of subscribers in the region for key streamers like Jawwy, Shahid, and Netflix will surpass the estimated no. of 15 million subscribers by 2025. Marc has long experience in international content production, acquisitions, formats and programming, as well as being an award-winning producer. He has consulted and produced unscripted and scripted content for major MENA players, and produced the first Arabic series streamed on Netflix "Justice" (العدالة); “I'm very proud to say five years ago, an Arabic language series that I produced in Abu Dhabi was the first Arabic series that SERIES MANIA ever took on and premiered here. That show became the first Arabic series that Netflix picked up and it is still there”. The conversation also highlighted the number of experienced media execs now helping major regional broadcasters and streamers compete in global markets: “So if you remember Peter Smith who used to be at NBCUniversal and Antenna, now he's running MBC Studios. If you remember Jakob Mejlhede, he was at NENT Studios, he's now commissioning head of SHAHID. Fredrik Ljungberg until very recently was a partner of mine at Viaplay - we made a co-production last year called 'Cold Courage', he is now Group Director - Central Commissioning Unit at MBC GROUP. The same for Nick Forward, who was the head of commissioning at STAN leading streamer in Australia, he's now moved to Dubai commissioning for OSN”.
