Rise Studios and Inter Medya Team Up for Turkish Series 'Caged Love'

Amanda Turnbull’s Rise Studios has started shooting “Caged Love,” a Turkish drama series produced through the company’s new partnership with Istanbul-based sales and distribution firm Inter Medya.

Turnbull, who previously ran Warner Bros. Discovery’s Middle East operations, founded Rise Studios in Dubai to build original content pipelines between the Gulf region and established entertainment markets. The “Caged Love” production is the first series to come out of the partnership the two companies forged, and it marks a concrete early test of whether that cross-regional strategy can deliver a show with the reach both sides are betting on.

Canan Çelik directs the series. She has built a reputation on Turkish productions that travel well internationally, and her attachment gives “Caged Love” real export credentials before a single episode airs.

The project sits at an interesting moment for Turkish television. The country’s drama sector has become one of the most reliably exportable content businesses anywhere, with series regularly landing across the Middle East, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Inter Medya has been a significant engine of that pipeline, moving Turkish titles into dozens of territories. Rise Studios, operating out of Dubai, puts Turnbull in a geography that consumes Turkish content at high volumes, which makes the partnership logical on paper and, now, apparently workable in practice.

Turnbull told Variety that the collaboration represents the kind of strategic alignment she built Rise Studios to pursue.

The broader picture here isn’t just about one show. It’s about what happens when a Dubai-based studio with deep regional relationships combines forces with a Turkish company that already knows how to sell content to the world. For the production and distribution business, that combination has real teeth. Turkish drama exports have grown into a multi-hundred-million-dollar annual industry, according to data tracked by the Turkish Exporters Assembly, and the Middle East remains one of the most active buying territories within that ecosystem.

Rise Studios won’t be the only company watching this project closely. Several Gulf-based production entities have tried to build bridges into Turkish content without much to show for it. What Turnbull brings that most can’t match is a decade of relationships inside the studio and broadcast world, built during her years running Warner Bros. Discovery’s regional operations. She didn’t come to Dubai as an outsider trying to learn the market. She came as someone who already understood how content moves through it.

The creative side carries weight too. Çelik’s track record matters because Turkish series don’t just sell on story alone. Buyers in regional markets have grown more selective. They want directors who can manage production quality at a pace that keeps international co-production partners comfortable, and Çelik fits that profile.

It’s worth watching where “Caged Love” lands in terms of distribution deals once production wraps. Inter Medya handles sales for a large slate of Turkish titles, and their infrastructure gives the show a head start in getting in front of buyers across the territory map. How wide that map ends up being will say something real about whether the Rise Studios and Inter Medya model can scale beyond a single project.

The Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council sets the regulatory framework within which domestic productions operate, but for a series aimed at international distribution, the more relevant pressure points are commercial. Which platforms buy it. Which territories close first. Whether the show finds an audience that justifies a second collaboration between the two companies.

Dubai has been aggressive in positioning itself as a content hub, and the Dubai Film and TV Commission has worked to attract exactly the kind of company Turnbull has built. Rise Studios fits the profile of what the emirate’s media economy wants: a company with genuine creative output, international connections, and an anchor in the region rather than just a registered address.

Production on “Caged Love” is underway now. Turnbull has the team, the director, and a distribution partner with one of the strongest Turkish content sales networks in the business. The first series from the Rise Studios and Inter Medya partnership has moved past the announcement stage and into something you can actually count on a production calendar.