Serial production in Russia has hardly felt the impact of the crisis so far, as projects have enough approved budgets last year, screenwriter and showrunner Ilya Kulikov told Izvestia on Friday, June 17.
These budgets are not reduced during the production process. But the advertising market has already been seriously affected, the expert notes, and further all manufacturers will have to be more inventive than before. But people still watch TV shows, and, as statistics show, they want to watch even more. Internet platforms are growing, and channels are not losing ground.
“But when the year ends, the fun begins. Bad fun. Of course, budgets will be severely cut. It will be like in times of crisis for the cinema. Well, we have already experienced such things, for example, the crisis of 2008. There, too, they had to make the series cheaper, but in the end, people began to approach this more creatively. You can, for example, recall the series “The Sword”, filmed inexpensively, but interesting, unusual. It became a hit,” he said.
Kulikov believes that Western serials, with their technological superiority ideologically and in terms of plot, today cannot be considered models, the situation there can be considered a crisis. And against this background, Russian TV series are able to work much more effectively with the audience, offering plots and characters that are understandable, close and interesting.