In 2002, producer Hisham Abdel Khalek returned from the Emirates to his home country of Egypt to establish a film company. He co-found the country s largest film conglomerate and his successes have surpassed even his own expectations.
In the six years he’s been home, Abdel Khalek’s productions have consistently dominated the local film industry. With several mega-hits such as Tito, Katkout, Taymour and Shafika and the current box-office champion El Gezira under his belt, Abdel Khalek has risen through the ranks to become one of the country s most successful producers.
Known for his reluctance to speak to the media, Abdel Khalek gave Daily News Egypt an exclusive four-hour interview to discuss his secrets, failures and the future of the Egyptian film industry.
Daily News Egypt: How did you start your career as a film producer?Abdel Khalek: I graduated from the faculty of commerce in 1981 and entered the movie industry through producer Riyad El-Erian, father of famous filmmaker Tarek El-Erian [of Snakes and Ladders and Tito ]. I started off by producing television serials in Greece before dismantling the project to form a computer company. I went back to the film industry in 1989 and opened up a company in the Emirates specialized in producing commercials and TV series.
I started to develop El-Massa there as well, before transferring the company s activities to Egypt in 2002, and then becoming a part of the Oscar/El-Nasr/El-Massa conglomerate later on.
How does this union between El-Massa, Oscar and El-Nasr function and how did it start?
Strong industries can t prosper without the presence of strong industrial institutions. I found that the best way to develop the film industry – and also to achieve maximum success – is to work within a big entity. In 2002, I started to search for the best film companies in Egypt that could form a strong united front. I found Oscar, a company that owns about three movie theaters, produces two movies annually and distributes three or four other movies. I also found El-Nasr, owned by Mohamed Hassan Ramzy, which used to distribute about 70 percent of the movies in the market, but did not own a single movie theater.
Both companies had no experience in foreign distribution, and by that I mean the Gulf, of course. I was coming from the Emirates with a background in the area. With my knowledge of the Gulf and their background in the Egyptian market, we soon agreed to form the Oscar/El-Nasr/ El-Massa union.
To my surprise, the press showered us with accusations of attempting to sabotage Al-Arabeya productions – one of the biggest companies in the field – and its owner Ms. Issad Younis.
The union didn t shatter or interfere with the autonomy of each company. The deal the three of us agreed to entails that the name of the company that produces a given movie come first on the poster, followed by the one responsible for internal distribution and then the one handling foreign distribution. We soon discovered that we didn t have enough films to distribute, and so we started producing our own movies and signing contracts with actors and film professionals.
At first, we used to produce two movies and distribute eight, then we started producing four and distributing six, and then we grew to produce eight movies and distributing two. We reached a point where our company had an abundance of products, and soon faced another obstacle: the lack of sufficient movie theaters. That’s when we decided to begin purchasing theaters.
What is the main obstacle facing the Egyptian film industry today?Distribution has always been one of the biggest obstacles, not production as many might assume. The limited number of movie theaters was murdering our internal distribution. External distribution, on the other hand, didn t exist because of the absence of a distributor in the market with an awareness of the Gulf market.
When we sit in meetings of the Egyptian Industry Union, it s clear that we are the weakest industry in terms of value and number of employees. Also, the officials refuse to deal with the movie industry as an industry, and instead treat it merely as a business. No one is acknowledging the cultural importance of our industry.
Your company, along with Al-Arabeya, has been accused of monopolizing the market. Each company now screens the films it produces and distributes exclusively, and solely, in the theaters it owns.
In the past, we used to screen any film released in the market in all movie theaters. That strategy created loads of problems due to the varying quality of film theaters.
Film distribution is usually controlled by three forces: The producer who wants to screen his movie in all movie theaters to maximize profit, the theater owner who wants to feature the most popular movie for as long as possible, and the distributor who wants to screen the film in the best movie theater.
It became commonplace for theater owners to remove films a few weeks after their release and replace them with other films that might not be as good, but have more profit potential. As a result, a lot of good movies failed to receive proper exposure.
Despite what some publications claimed, our decision to screen our films exclusively in our theatres was not a reaction to a conflict with Al-Arabeya over comedy star Mohamed Saad. Our decision was essentially taken for the sake of films and nothing else.
Furthermore, my ownership of these theaters gives me the right to choose which movies to screen.
The media has criticized me for owning around 60 percent of the market share due to the superiority and popularity of my theaters. But I d like to remind everyone that we are the ones who took the initiative to buy theaters in locations our competitors feared to approach. The CityStars complex, for example, was quite expensive, but we chose to purchase it and it turned out to be a great investment
This decision will prove to be beneficial for the entire industry. Film companies were accustomed to screening the average pictures they d produced accompanied by strong offerings produced by their competitors. This would compensate for potential losses brought by their low-quality productions. The new system, however, doesn t offer a safety net. Nothing can compensate the losses of a badly made film.
After we made our decision public, Al-Arabeya announced plans to buy and open 28 new theaters. The increase in the number of theaters is essential to the development of the industry, and I think our decision has already proven to be the right one. Just compare revenues of last year to 2006.
In 2006, the top grossing films were Yacoubian Building (LE 22 million), “Mattab Sinaae (LE 20 million) and An El Eshk Wel Hawa (LE 14 million).
Last year, Adel Imam s Morgan Ahmed Morgan scooped LE 25 million, Ahmed Helmy came in second with LE 24 million from Keda Reda and Ahmed El Sakka made almost the same amount with Taymour and Shafika. The difference is pretty obvious.
The major productions released after Ramadan all tanked at the box-office with both you and Al-Arabeya claiming big losses. What happened?We are all searching haphazardly for success. There is no formula that ensures the success of any film. It s impossible to predict how any film will perform at the box-office. Still, well-made movies with solid stories have continuously managed to earn impressive numbers in the last few years.The failure of the movies you mentioned can be attributed to the audience being inundated with the heavy dose of Ramadan television dramas. The majority of those serials were first-class dramas like A Public Opinion Case, Yetraba Fi Ezzo and King Farouk, which grabbed the public’s attention for an entire month. By the time the Eid films were released, the audience wasn’t interested in consuming any more dramas.
Did you expect the massive success for your latest production “El-Gezira ?There are three main criteria by which we can measure the success of any film: Box-office, reviews and production value. Very few films are capable of scoring in all three cri
teria, and because this is ideal, we try to inject our films with particular elements that would create a balance between the three. With “El-Gezira (The Island) though, we were initially faced with two main challenges: The difficult Upper-Egypt dialect that is not quite popular with the multiplex viewers, and the fact that the protagonist of the film is unsympathetic criminal. But Sherif Arafa s brilliant direction and command of his craft, combined with a remarkable turn from Ahmed El-Sakaa, made the film the huge success it is now.
But, as a producer, I d also like to add that the sufficient resources we provided the film with are another key factor in its success.
