The Protector series celebrates its 3rd anniversary

The Protector

On December 14, 2018, the world premiere of the first Turkish series of the Netflix digital platform The Protector / Hakan Muhafiz took place. This release was what everyone feared and expected in the Turkish show business.

In the first month on the platform, the series was watched by 10 million viewers, it topped the charts in France, Brazil, Australia, Israel and many other countries, where they had never heard of Turkish series before. This was officially announced by the management of the platform in its report to investors, citing the success of the project as proof of the correctness of its content strategy aimed at non-English-speaking markets.

The Protector is still the platform’s most sought-after original Turkish project, and it was its success that allowed Netflix to provide significant funding for the projects that came after it.

The fear of Turkish producers, distributors and channels also proved to be justified – three years later, film distributions cannot find movies that will be shown in cinemas, channels and producers have to persuade superstars, directors, screenwriters and other crew members to work on television. The choice is not always obvious.

For all the shortcomings of the series, it did what was expected: it opened a new era in the Turkish show business, and no one will ever be able to change this.