Managing Director Vivek Lath and Jimmy George, VP, Sales & Acquisitions, talk to Stanislav Kimchev about GoQuest Media's successful content deals in CEE as the international distributor continues to add new titles from the region and helps to popularize series produced in countries like Serbia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and the Czech Republic around the world.


Go Quest launched in 2013, focusing on South Asian content and later expanded to represent titles from other territories, including Central and Eastern Europe. How big is your catalog now in terms of titles and their origin?

We now have more than 45 titles in our catalog. When it comes to our acquisition model some titles are on a pure representation basis but most of them are for distribution. In the past, we actually bought some of them and our catalog is only growing. We are now looking for not only individual titles but also libraries to distribute in different regions.


You were a Premium Exhibitor at this year's NATPE Budapest. What did GoQuest bring to the market in terms of content and were you looking to add high-quality content to your portfolio?

We brought three really interesting titles to this year’s NATPE Budapest. Two of these titles are from Polish public broadcaster TVP. One is Erinyes, and the other is Crusade.

Erinyes stars Marcin Dorocinski, who is a very popular actor from Poland and has played key roles in international Netflix series such as The Queen’s Gambit and Vikings: Valhalla. You will also see him in Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1. Erinyes is a period crime drama where he's playing a detective.

And then there is Crusade, a high-octane action crime drama. We also have a very interesting title called Troll Farm that we’ve acquired from Lithuania. The series is a five parter and it's got its own soul and is very different from whatever you've seen. It is part drama, part comedy, about a woman who loses her job and she has to get back at the people who wronged her, and how she does that - by starting a troll farm. It is a small series but has a big heart.


How did you decide to focus on CEE content specifically? What makes such content interesting to buyers and how do you choose the titles for your catalog?

To be honest, the decision to focus on CEE content happened for multiple reasons. Number one - as a company we wanted to expand from just distributing Indian content to becoming a global distributor. The first sort of ‘ask’ when we did was to ask where the content was going to come from? Who were we going to service and where was the supply? So, for us, the ‘low hanging fruit’ was definitely CEE because the quality of production from this region since 2017-18 has been exponentially improving. So, suddenly there was great programming, great production values, great stories and great acting coming out of CEE.

Secondly, we also noticed that because of the kind of content the CEE had produced in the past, a lot of other bigger distributors weren’t interested in what they had to offer at the time. So, for us it was the perfect fit between what CEE was producing; where GoQuest stood and what it wanted to do.

Third was the right timing in terms of how the global market was responding to shows that were not traditionally from Hollywood or from the UK. Again, we had seen the phenomenon of shows like Money Heist and Squid Game. They've now become you know, very common terms in our industry. The direction was very clear - the content requirement was changing. Now, more and more content from a lot of other countries will start seeing the demand and markets and audiences will also start demanding that content. So, for us, where the market is going was criteria number one, where the supply is available was criteria number two and what stage GoQuest and its ambitions were, was criteria number three. And, when they all fitted together, for us, it was an easy decision to make.


In which territories is CEE content most popular? Which are your bestsellers from the region?

I don't have one answer for this because we sell content to various territories around the world and maybe 2 or 3 years ago, if I told you we will sell a Serbian show in maybe Puerto Rico, you would have laughed at me, but that is a reality for us now. We have just sold a Ukrainian series in Japan. Honestly, there is no single answer for that. In our major territories like Asia, Europe, Latin America, there are certain pockets which buy content on a regular basis. And, some of our bestsellers are titles like Traitor from Estonia, Civil Servant from Serbia and Rats from the Czech Republic. And also, in the long running space, Ukrainian titles Ruby Ring and I’m On Your Side have done exceptionally well for us. We've added a whole lot of long running series to our catalogue too and you'll see more stuff coming in the course of this year.


What are the latest trends in CEE series production? Can we say that one or several genres dominate over the rest?

Previously, CEE was predominantly buying content from various places, be it telenovelas or any of the Hollywood content. They’ve only recently started producing content so I feel that the content will only get better from hereon. There are these really major players who have much more capital than others who are producing, but we also see smaller producers who are making shows which have the potential to go to various territories around the world and sits well with companies like ours.

So, you may have a Nova group, an Antenna group or an RTL, or a Telekom Serbia. They are the bigger producers in those different regions. At the same time, you have individual producers who have given us shows like Rats, like Sacrificial and Troll Farm. So, we're seeing a mix to be very honest.


Is drama still the king on the international distribution market? What is the reason for that, in your opinion?

It's a staple, that's all. It is what we call those daily ingredients in your food - the quality of the steak may change, but it's that barbecue sauce or that butter that's the same. So, it's the spices that no matter what you're cooking goes in. So, dramas are king and they continue to rule. Even though the storytelling, and the storylines may not have changed that much over the years, the demand has not gone down. In fact, demand is only going up to be very honest.


Do you think that only the demand is the reason that we go mostly with drama, because we also see that comedy is on the rise?

When we say drama, we typically look at mostly long form fiction content, anything which is more than 50 to 60 episodes. So, for us, anything fiction whether it is comedy or whether it is pure drama, as long as it is targeted to a family audience, a mix of men and women, but predominantly women, it just works.


You have offices in India, the UK and Vietnam, and local sales presence in Latin America and Turkey. Have you planned further expanding your network to other countries or regions?

Yes, we do. As our catalog is expanding, we realize that we definitely need more bandwidth and more focus. So, for example, while we have Mikaela Perez running the whole of North and South America, at some point we will have to have more people just focusing on North America in her team, in due time. So, teams will expand, we will have more folks focusing on specific countries or specific regions for that matter. In fact, we've had a full-time employee in Vietnam just for the Vietnamese market for the last seven years. So, depending on the size of different countries and different markets we will keep expanding and we will keep hiring sales people in those regions.


As an independent global distributor, have you considered stepping into production or co-production business?

We have considered and attempted co-productions. However, we realized that it was taking away a lot of our time and bandwidth as a company and would detract from our growth on the distribution side. We have decided to focus as much as possible on the distribution side and we are looking at co-production deals which fuels our distribution business, but we don't intend to become or build our name as a producer. We intend to build our name as a company that knows how to monetize content and to get that inventory. If we need to co-produce, we will co-produce.