Format

Los Angeles-based TGC Global Entertainment (TGC GE), led by US format veteran Phil Gurin, has signed representation deals with Dubai’s Different Productions and Colombia’s Miracol Media. These partnerships expand TGC GE’s global network into the MENA region, Mexico, and Latin America.

The collaboration begins with Miracol's reality football series Soccer Dreams, where a football legend scouts and trains amateur players. TGC GE has also added two shows from Different Productions: The Mall, a survival game inside a shopping mall, and The Star, Saudi Arabia’s first singing competition.

In The Mall, 14 participants are divided into two teams who then live throughout the entire production inside a fully functioning shopping mall. Instead of enjoying the retail therapy and going home, the participants are subjected to a range of challenges to exist and survive without money, phones, or social media. The winner is the person who can pit their wits to overcome the struggles of basic survival, conspiracies and betrayal under 24-hour surveillance, avoid elimination and leave with a big cash prize.

The Star was Saudi Arabia’s first ever singing format where contestants drawn from a nationwide search, audition to open a door that introduces them to the judges, or be sent straight through the opposite door to elimination. Blind duet battles then decide the final 12 participants through to the live episodes round. Four final contestants then battle it out to get the keys to walk through the right door again to become, The Star.

Phil Gurin, president and CEO of TGC GE, said: “Different and Miracol join our fast-growing network of partners, which now circles the globe, from Europe — North, West, South and East — through Asia to Australia and New Zealand. And it’s not just TGC GE that benefits from this pool of local and regional knowledge, experience and contacts: as these option deals for Soccer Dreams and Fridge Wars demonstrate, there’s also huge potential for the cross-pollination of ideas and business within the TGC GE family. In many ways, our international network is a microcosm of the global formats industry, which is to ensure that world-class entertainment from the world’s best creatives continues to made, sold and enjoyed by audiences around the world.”