Podcast: Film accelerator turns Israel from high-tech to content nation

Welcome to Times Will Tell, The Times of Israel’s weekly feature podcast.

This week, we speak to two of the co-founders of New Legend, a pioneering company in the field of financing Israeli film and television content.

Israeli filmmakers and showrunners have spent years chasing government funding and from local production studios in order to create budgets for their content.

New Legend created a new model and venture for financing film and television projects, with backing from Israeli investment firm Meitav Dash, which will tap into its network of Israeli investors and business relationships to fund this new entertainment venture.

While Meitav Dash also operates some of Israel’s largest pension funds, the funding for New Legend comes from the firm’s own investments.

Gal Yissar, CEO of New Legend, and Oded Turgeman, New Legend’s director of content, talks about this new model of the film and TV business in Israel, building on the country’s reputation as a high-tech nation that is now becoming the content nation.

New Legend recently established an accelerator with the Jerusalem Film and Television Fund, splitting the funding equally and selecting 11 new TV projects for development, and bringing together additional funding from leading broadcasters, including Netflix, HBO, A&E and Israeli studios Yes and Hot.

Yissar comes from the world of Israeli high-tech while Turgeman has years of experience in developing animation content.

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