Lior Raz, co-founder of Tel Aviv-based Faraway Road and co-creator of political thriller Fauda, has expanded the firm’s development slate, its team and the scope of its ambitions since it was acquired by big-spending Candle Media.

Lior Raz

A little over a year ago, Candle Media, the media and investment company led by Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs and backed by private equity giant Blackstone, confirmed it had acquired Israeli production company Faraway Road Productions.

The deal was interesting from several perspectives, not least because Faraway Road, led by co-founders Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, was a comparatively small acquisition next to some of the other mega deals executed by Candle Media.

Those included the US$900m acquisition of Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine and the US$2.7bn it spent on Moonbug Entertainment, the company behind preschool brands such as CoComelon and Blippi.

“It was a surprise to us that we got approached by Kevin, Tom and Candle. They had been doing big acquisitions and we were a smaller one,” says Raz.

But the deal has proven to be beneficial for both sides, plugging Faraway into Hollywood and giving it access to new capital, and also enabling Candle to step into premium non-English-language drama. The US-based company would later go on to acquire Spanish-language prodco Exile Content Studio.

Candle Media “wanted to expand internationally and be in Europe, Israel, Asia, Africa and South America to develop content that would not just be American content. This is what we bring,” Raz says.

Raz and Issacharoff are best known for creating and developing the Israeli political thriller Fauda, produced by Yes Studios for Israeli network Yes, which has garnered widespread acclaim and solid viewing figures for Netflix over the course of its four-season run. They also co-created and exec produced the Netflix drama Hit & Run, which ran for one season in 2021.

Raz is one of the stars of both shows, meaning he has had to fully embrace 20-hour working days as he juggles the various responsibilities of filming, nurturing a development slate and building Faraway Road with Issacharoff. The pair bring a fascinating story to the TV and film industry, having both served in the Israel Defense Forces – experiences they drew upon in the creation of Fauda.

The investment from Candle Media has allowed Faraway Road to scale up rapidly, particularly the size of its development slate. Whereas the prodco was formerly “two creators making one or two shows,” the cash injection has seen Faraway Road grow to the point it has around 20 projects in its pipeline, says Raz.

Among them, Faraway Road is developing a feature film set in the Second World War (Raz says the scope of the project is “bigger than what we ever thought possible”) and the company has produced a four-part spy project for Showtime, which is currently being edited.

In addition, Faraway Road is working on another movie for Netflix, which Raz says is a true story about a world event that involved Libya, Israel and the US, and has projects in development with heavy hitters such as Jerry Bruckheimer, Spyglass Media Group and Thunder Road Pictures.

Political thriller Fauda was produced by Yes Studios for Israeli network Yes

Raz says the forthcoming projects will retain Faraway Road’s DNA of “true, real stories about identity” and says the company will “continue to bring gritty, uncomfortable, raw storytelling to the world.”

Being part of Candle Media has also allowed Faraway Road to expand its team. Last summer, the prodco named Salome Peillon, former head of international sales at ITV-owned Armoza Formats, as its chief operating office, and Adi Ezroni, most recently co-head of features and VP of television at Keshet Studios, as executive VP of content.

With a significant presence in both Israel and LA, Raz says the company plans to open branches in Europe and Asia in the future.

“It is exciting because under Candle Media we are exploring and have the chance to learn a lot about the global industry. We have so many global collaboration opportunities with the other companies under Candle Media too, as well as the brains of Tom and Kevin helping us to develop our business.”

But while Faraway Road has access to more capital than before, it is scaling up at a moment when the broader TV and streaming sector is scaling back. Asked whether he has observed commissioners becoming more cautious, Raz says: “Yes, of course, we all feel it.”

Faraway Road, which until this point has produced most of its series outside the US, is well versed in creating premium content at reasonable price points – an increasingly key focus for budget-conscious platforms and broadcasters in 2023.

“When we tell people how much Fauda costs, for 12 episodes, they laugh. They don’t understand how we can produce such a high-action thriller show at such low cost,” he says.

“For example, we recently shot in Morocco, so it was less money than the average show shot in the US. And we’re developing our opportunities and connections all over Europe, Eastern Europe, Morocco, Jordan and Israel to be able to produce in local markets. We’re very good at knowing how to produce at low cost.”

He clarifies that the cost of production is not a primary consideration but rather a byproduct of creating content in non-English-speaking markets. “We’re not writing a script or choosing scripts because of the low cost of production. We’re thinking about a good story, script and package.”

A lot has changed in the international TV market since 2016, when Netflix first picked up the Hebrew- and Arabic-language show Fauda. While Israeli scripted formats had already made their mark globally, it represented the first major deal from an international streamer for an Israeli show, helping to raise the profile of Israeli drama.

Raz and Issacharoff’s Netflix drama Hit & Run

Raz says he never imagined the series would resonate internationally, especially given that he and Issacharoff had such difficulty getting it off the ground in Israel. It was also the subject of a Hindi-language adaptation in India, produced by Applause Entertainment for Sony Liv.

“It’s funny. Even in the beginning, no one actually wanted to buy it in Israel, so it was a hard sell and we had to pitch it all over,” he says. “We wrote it for Israel and didn’t know it was going to be such a big hit for Netflix worldwide.

“For us, Fauda is an anchor for Faraway Road – this is our brand. We love to make that show even though it’s a relatively small show now compared with some of the others we’re doing. It’s a small show but we love it and we will continue to make more of it, hopefully.” No official announcement has been made on whether Fauda will be renewed for a fifth season.

Now, in its second year under the Candle Media umbrella, Faraway Road is hoping to receive green lights for several of the projects it has developed over the past 18 months. “We have so many in development and we [would like to] get four or five [greenlit] in the next year,” he says.

While Faraway Road certainly has the attention of international streamers and studios, the company plans to also keep developing projects within the local Israeli system. Until around a year ago, Faraway Road was under an overall TV deal with Netflix. That has now ended, allowing the prodco to take its projects to a larger pool of streamers and studios.

“We have so many opportunities. We can produce in Israel, Europe, Germany, the UK, France – we have a lot of ideas of coproductions between Israel and US, too,” says Raz. “The world becomes like a big playground for us to work and develop things. We can sell territory-by-territory or go to streamers and sell everywhere.”