Malaysia’s Primeworks Studios is expanding its horizons, with projects that stretch the domestic studios’ capabilities beyond anywhere it has gone and anything it has done in the past. CEO Izham Omar talks about not getting fat and lazy, changing perceptions, and about doubling up on the effort to find titles that will work outside Malaysia while, at the same time, not losing the connections with its key mass-market audience at home. The learning curve has been steep, he says. “But it filters back and increases our expertise and understanding of production on an international level”. Along with companywide upgrades in the name of a more sophisticated production ecosystem, Omar says the biggest challenge is “creating content that is universal”.

"Asian stories for the world. That is our goal.”

“Primeworks produced 10 of the top 20 shows in Malaysia last year and all of the top three. These numbers are not meant to impress. They’re meant to show that we’re busy making Malaysian stuff and I think it is time that we need to change.”

"We have to fight against the perception that we are a local broadcaster with local quality... that we are too traditional and maybe a bit too big, that we move slowly. We felt that if we look closer, we have big competitive advantages. Number one is that we’ve been making hits locally for the longest time and we know that most regional platforms actually need localisation. All the regional platforms have said they want to go into a country and they want to launch with a localised hit/hit maker.” [Another of our advantages is that] We have a huge platform to promote and launch stuff, whether it’s on the biggest TV station on the land, or OTT through tonton. And we have games and app departments, radio, outdoor and print. We actually use our book order to fund innovations, which other small producers cannot do because they have to rely on the next big client to come in. So we use our revenue to be as innovative as much as we can. The skills that we don’t have, we partner with the smaller specialised production outfits.”

“We produce about 6,000 hours a year and four to six films a year. Right now we have more than 100,000 hours in our archives.”

"A few years ago, we looked at our challenges. Number one is to get new clients. The reason why this is a challenge is because our book order internally is very healthy to the point that we probably got complacent because money was going to come in from our sister company anyway and our guys could get fat and lazy, including me.”

"Pulang (Homecoming), released this year, was our biggest risk and our biggest investment at the time. We received a grant from the Malaysian government, which was great because the government has never given Media Prima a grant before.” Following Pulang, based on the true story of a man who sails off promising to return and takes 61 years to do it, Primeworks broke its own record on movie co-pro with Zainir Aminullah’s investment/ development fund, Ideate Media. The film is set in Indonesia and is about a woman assassin who boards a moving train in Borneo and starts killing everyone. Media Prima has also co-produced drama with Singapore’s Mediacorp, documentaries with Japan’s Fuji TV, and factual/travel shows with Japan’s Nippon TV, and has tried its hand at developing formats."

"We have something we called efficiency in budgets, meaning that we know how to make something really cheap. I’m shooting myself in the foot here, but we do... So we can also be partners in local incentives. And you combine that with the Malaysian government being very, very generous with incentives for productions being shot in Malaysia, we could be a partner for that.”

Published on ContentAsia's Issue Seven, 27 November 2017