News continues to come from the Disney + front. According to the news of C21Media, which follows the MIPTV agenda that started in Cannes as of today, Disney + gave up broadcasting the El Turco series starring Can Yaman and the rights of the series returned to its producer Ay Yapım.
The shooting of the English-language series was completed last year, and El Turco, which is currently in the post-production phase, is expected to meet the audience this year. Ay Yapım will be negotiating with different platforms for the series, starting with MipTV this week.
Orhan Yeniaras’ El Turco – II. Inspired by the novel Unknown Aspects of the Siege of Vienna, the drama tells the story of the Ottoman soldier Balaban Agha, who, after being wounded in the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, was looked after by the peasants of Moana in Northern Italy, where he settled, and later organized a successful peasant uprising against the feudal lords and their heavy taxes.
Ay Yapım’s CEO Kerem Çatay recently told C21 about the series, “This is a true story that no one knows. There is a village in Northern Italy and they still celebrate Turkish Week in August, because this man saved them.” he said.
Disney+, which took action to reduce costs and reshape its content strategy, removed almost 80% of the productions in Turkey from its platform last year. Deciding to focus on core markets, the company gave up on the Atatürk TV series about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which drew great reactions.
According to research company Ampere Analysis, in 2022, Turkey was one of the main focuses of Disney +’s order strategy outside the USA, and Turkish productions constituted 15% of the platform’s international orders that year.