The first complete day of CONTENT BUDAPEST has started to answer the questions that everybody makes about this new situation of two events in the Hungarian capital in two weeks. Is there space for two shows? It can be, but of course it has no sense to organize them so close. CONTENT BUDAPEST follows the line of CONTENT LONDON, etc. very focused on co-productions, business models, alliances, with specific people. Not many attendees were last week and this week in the events. NATPE BUDAPEST had a double of attendance, but more oriented to finished content sales, though both events intend to cover all segments. Let’s see the rest of the week.

Yesterday it was very interested the panel of content analysts, deploying CEE content figures. Jack Davison, 3vision: ‘Disney led the CEE market content penetration with 98% in 2022 and 96% in 2023. Then we had Paramount with 60% and 87% respectively, and Lionsgate with 48% and 67%. After them we have Warner Bros, NBC Universal and Sony Pictures’. Alex Cameron, Parrot Analytitcs: ‘During the last 5 years, drama was the top genre, followed by comedy, realities, animation, kids, action and adventure, lastly documentaries. Content from Turkey and Israel have exploded, comparing to the past, both in high local demand and travelability to other markets’.

A main space in the ‘Content’ events have the pitchings, to push co-productions between local and international players. A prize of USD 20.000 is promised to the winner, to be announced at the boat party on Wednesday. ‘Content Budapest pitch Series 1’ introduced ventures as ‘Alchevsky Mistery’ a detective series; ‘Chopain’, from Balassa Films (Mexico); ‘Running in Heels’, about a female Friends group and a murder; ‘Party Zanky’, against the Russian invasión in Ukraine; ‘Boring As Hell’, ‘Undercover Gladiator’. The ‘Content Budapest Pitch Series 2’, after midday, included ‘The Border’, about the problems in a big family; ‘The Dissection’ about the medicine modernization of the Otoman Impire; ‘Odin’s Eye’, about vikings and zombies; and ‘Rumba-Rum-Bamm’, about abortion among the pandemic and the war.

About Ukraine, there was an specific event involving the country leading producers with international partners. 1+1 Media presented ‘The evil empire’ and ‘Russian Warship fuck you decisive battle’, while Film.UA introduced ‘Rise from ashes’ and ‘the imaginary worlds of Stanislaw Lem’, and Suspilne launched ‘For Life’, and ‘Wedding during the war’. All the projects received good predisposition from Western Europe attendees like ITV Studios, etc.

There was also a Latin America panel, to promote the traffic between this region and CEE, that in the past was very intense around traditional telenovelas, but in the last years needs to be reloaded. There were leading distributors as Claudia Sahab of Televisa Univision (USA/Mexico) who introduced ‘Montecristo’, ‘Las travesuras de la Niña Mala’ (from famous writer Mario Vargas Llosa) and ‘Mas Alla de Ti’, mainly thrillers; Gabriel Doria of Globo (Brazil) presented ‘The others’, super production, and ‘Never give up’, for the whole family; and Paloma Garcia of Caracol TV (Colombia) which included ‘Romina’ and ‘Ventino: el precio de la gloria’, biopic. They all agreed: ‘We are far more than telenovelas nowadays. We have big budget productions, thrillers, action stories, that have few to envy to US series. If CEE takes back Latin America, they have a big opportunity to surprise the audiences’.

Francisco Ferreyra, from Budapest

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