On “Seka Filmset”, an area the size of 25 football fields, entire parts of Istanbul’s old town have been recreated, including its famous Grand Bazaar.

Many technically elaborate television series which have achieved international success have been filmed here over the past few years, including the Ottoman-period detective series “Filinta”.

Turkey has become one of the biggest exporters of soap operas in the world, having sold productions in around 100 countries.

Only the United States exports more television series, according to Turkey’s exports association.

The audiences are 10,000 kilometres away or more.

The Turkish soap opera “Guemues” (“Silver”) flickers on a television screen in a pub in Cartagena, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

“Turkish series are just beginning to get popular here,” says Angela Amador Ramos, a chef who never misses an episode.

The 51-year-old says the Turkish productions are more diverse than Latin American telenovelas.

“It’s not just love stories that are central but also Turkish culture. I’m interested in the daily lives of Turks,” she adds.

The breakthrough for Turkish melodramas abroad came around five years ago with the period series “Muhtesem Yuezyil” (“Magnificent Century”), based on the life of Ottoman Sultan Sueleyman the Magnificent.

After first becoming a hit in the Middle East, it was soon sold on to another 70 countries around the world.

While in the 1990s Turkish channels mainly broadcast Brazilian telenovelas, nowadays they’re selling their own productions to Latin America.

“Turkish series are breathing fresh life into the television industry there,” says media expert Asli Tunc of Istanbul’s Bilgi University.

“To them, Turkish culture is exotic.”

Fateful encounters, beautiful people and tragic love stories, often in a period setting: Turkish television series are epic |fairytales.

“In fact stories that in earlier times were told orally are now being told by TV series,” explains Mustafa Akilli, who has worked as a producer on various television series for more than 20 years.

Ece Yoerenc has written scripts for series including “Ask-i Memnu” (“Forbidden Love”) and “Fatmaguel’uen Sucu Ne?” (“What’s Fatmaguel’s Fault?”), both of which were hits in Arab countries.

“Fatmaguel’s about violence against women, so a very global topic, which affects women in daily life. We decided to write a very strong woman’s role,” says Yoerenc.

The series is even credited with encouraging women in Saudi Arabia to campaign for more rights.

“In my opinion Turkish series have practically brought about an Arab Spring for women,” says Yoerenc.

“The series have become such a phenomenon in the Middle East, as well as in the Balkans and in Latin America, because viewers in every region discover something of their own in them,” adds Tunc.

Greeks watch the Istanbul fairytales with nostalgia because they see reflected in them the Greek values of the 1970s, she says: a traditional society in which the family is all important.

In Arab countries by contrast, the series have had a liberating influence on women.

“Ironically viewers in the Middle East see the same series as emancipating, while the audience in Greece thinks it’s conservative.”

But the success of Turkish series abroad isn’t being viewed as positive by everyone.

“Since the series have been sold abroad, they’ve got longer and longer,” grumbles Arda Sariguen, an assistant director.

Why? Because the longer the episode, the more adverts can be slotted in.

“When I was working on Arka Sokaklar (Side Streets) four years ago, one episode was around 90 minutes long. Last year we were supposed to produce 150 minutes a week and we had two teams working seven days a week.”

It’s become a “conveyor belt” industry, he says.

An episode of 150 minutes is equivalent to a very long film, and it all has to be filmed within a week.

“That’s only possible if people work on set until they’re completely burnt out,” says Ersin Goek of actors union Oyuncular Sendikasi.

“At the moment they’re working 16 to 18 hours a day on average, often without insurance and proper safety measures.”

The television series industry is completely unregulated, he says.

“The more the sector grows without government regulation, the more people are exploited.”

And that’s not good for the quality of the series, which are becoming ever more alike – though that doesn’t appear to have dented their popularity.

In unpredictable times, they offer audiences an escape from their daily lives, says Tunc.

“In hard times, people need to see fairytales. They want the baddies to get their just deserts.”

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter follows similar money-spinning ventures in Florida and Japan, but is set to be the most technologically advanced so far, incorporating state-of-the-art 3D effects with the traditional fun of the fair.

Opening last week at Universal Studios beneath the Hollywood hills, it is the latest attraction in a burgeoning film-industry sideline that has become so lucrative executives are beginning to design sets with the idea of turning them into theme parks.

“When you think about the property of Harry Potter – all seven books and eight movies – there’s no better place than the filmmaking capital of the world to have this ultimate experience,” says Thierry Coup, senior vice-president of Universal Creative, the studio’s research and development division.

The last Harry Potter film was released five years ago but the character’s appeal remains as strong as ever, with fans eagerly awaiting stage show “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”, which opens in London this year.

Meanwhile a spin-off movie trilogy is due to hit the big screen later in the year, starting with “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”.

Together with the recently introduced Despicable Me Minion Mayhem, the award-winning Simpsons park area and Transformers: The Ride – 3D, the Harry Potter attraction sees Universal partnering with Hollywood for a merchandising merry-go-round to rival Disney’s.

Setting records

Next up for Universal a park based on “The Walking Dead”. It will be a permanent attraction harnessing the phenomenal success of the AMC TV zombie drama.

Disney, meanwhile, has been picking up the pace since its 2014 Magic Kingdom expansion in Florida. Before 2020, Disney has plans for attractions based on “Avatar” and “Star Wars” as “Toy Story” and “Frozen”.

Motiongate Dubai, set to open in October, has announced a starting slate of 27 attractions inspired by films from DreamWorks, Sony and Lionsgate, including “The Hunger Games”, “How to Train Your Dragon” and “The Smurfs”.

The Harry Potter attraction marks Universal’s fourth foray into the boy-wizard’s universe, with two launches in Orlando, Florida, and an opening in Osaka, Japan, seeing the company increase visitors by up to 30 per cent.

“There’s a huge effort to really address every facet of the creative process,” supervising art director Alan Gilmore says at Wizarding World. “The film is only one part of that, but you want to try and create a film that can be translated into all of this.”

Harry Potter’s enduring appeal was evidenced by Universal’s announcement that last Thursday’s opening had sold out days ahead, marking the first time that the park has had to halt online ticketing transactions.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the growth of Universal Studios – three quarters of the park has been transformed over the last five years – would create new jobs, stimulate hospitality revenues and strengthen the economy. “In Los Angeles, tourism is surging. We’ve set records each of the last five years and we’re just getting started.”

The attraction, which boasts the forbidding Hogwarts castle as its iconic focal point, transports visitors into the visual landscape of JK Rowling’s books and the Warner Bros films that followed.

Magical experience

The attention to detail is impressive, from the fading patinas on the slate-grey stone blocks that make up the aged rustic Hog’s Head tavern to the painstakingly worn edges of the stained furniture and the grimy floors.

The quaint fictional village of Hogsmeade bustles with the chatter of merchants on the cobblestone streets and a pub packed with thirsty patrons under a snow-capped roof.

If all that sounds like the run-of-the-mill theme park, the signature “Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey” ride combining state-of-the-art 360-degree 3D special effects, live-action thrills and groundbreaking robotics, is anything but.

Gilmore, an architect by trade, says Wizarding World boasts many original props from the films, including the luggage racks from the Hogwarts Express, Hagrid’s motorbike and a costume from the Yule ball.

“Here, we don’t have actors, we have real people. So it was very important that we at least realised the set design perfectly so that when you step into this world you feel you’re in the film,” Gilmore says.

Among a pack of reporters and photographers seeking their inner wizard at a preview were several stars from the films, including Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy, and Warwick Davis – Professor Flitwick to Hogwarts pupils.

“Even though I’ve experienced much like this, having worked on the films, for me coming to Wizarding World is a more magical experience,” says Davis, the dwarf actor from “Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi”, “Labyrinth”, “Willow” and the TV series “Life’s Too Short”.

“These environments are more immersive because you can walk into somewhere like the Three Broomsticks from Hogsmeade and it exists in reality, whereas when you make the movies these locations and sets are quite separate.”

Neel Sethi is about to become famous as the star of Disney’s “The Jungle Book”, but the 12-year-old first-time actor plays it cool.

“I’ve never done this before so I think this is normal – but it’s not,” he says, nonplussed, while on a promotional trip for his film in Mumbai.

He plays the “orphan-turned-man-cub” Mowgli, bare-chested, barefooted and sporting nothing but an orange loincloth and a mop of matted hair, and raised in the Indian jungles by a pack of wolves, a panther and a bear.

In fact, Sethi, a first-generation Asian-American, is the only human star in the film, based on the book by British author Rudyard Kipling and given a multi-million-dollar blockbuster update with director Jon Favreau at the helm.

The movie is otherwise populated with animals voiced by a star-studded cast including Bill Murray as Baloo the Bear, Ben Kingsley as Bagheera the Panther, Idris Elba as Shere Khan the Tiger and Scarlett Johansson as Kaa the Serpent.

So obviously, Sethi’s face is plastered on hoardings at cinemas all around the world including India, where the movie’s trailers and teasers run between every advertisement break on television, on every other channel, sometimes twice.

At a press conference in a cinema hall in the upmarket Mumbai neighbourhood of Worli, almost a hundred journalists from India have gathered, with an arsenal of video cameras and cameras, flashing at Sethi’s every smile and animated gesture.

Meanwhile, members of his entourage – including his parents, who are both dentists, and his on-the-road tutor who spends about three hours with him every day – stand close by beaming proudly as he fields questions smoothly.

“What’s been the reaction from your friends at school?” one reporter asks.

“They don’t realise how big it is,” he says, before throwing his hands up and quickly adding: “But I’m happy about that.”

Another asks if “girls are impressed”.

He scrunches up his nose before replying, “I don’t really care”, drawing peals of laughter from the crowd.

Sethi is getting the bona fide star treatment and seems to be taking to it like a professional.

Just once does he show he is slightly overwhelmed by it all and looks towards his parents for reassurance.

During the promotional trip, he does not have Mowgli’s mop of matted hair, which he reveals are extensions that took 90 minutes to fix every morning. Instead, he is in a crisp shirt, sneakers and slicked- back hair, looking every inch the boy from Manhattan.

He was chosen for the role from around 2,000 children from the US, UK, New Zealand and Canada who auditioned.

After his bhangra teacher in New York told him about the auditions, he went at the end of elementary school, aged 10, and got the part shortly after.

Referring to the director, who had also helmed 2008’s “Iron Man”: “Jon says I was fun to watch and that he kept rewatching my audition.”

For the audition, he says he showed off his karate moves and “I also knew the lines off the book, I knew them in my sleep”.

Martial arts is a hobby he still pursues.

His energy, which he clearly has lots of, was crucial to his performance in the film, which was shot entirely on a blue screen soundstage in Los Angeles.

Not only did he just do “whatever everyone told me to”, but he also had to undergo training in parkour, the urban sport of free-running over obstacles.

“It’s really just jumping from one blue shaded platform to another and then they make that look like a 400-foot [120-metre] drop. When I first watched it, I thought, ‘I’m cool’,” he says, his eyes lighting up whenever he talks about his experiences on set.

Whether evading the manhunting tiger Shere Khan or running with the wolf pack through swathes of jungle, he had to learn to run like a movie star. “It’s like slicing onions. The stuntman told me I had to do that,” he quips, swinging his arms furiously like, say, Tom Cruise in an action flick.

While the boy got to film with a few of his co-stars in real life – namely Murray, Kingsley and Christopher Walken, who voiced King Louie, the king of the monkeys who is in pursuit of fire – he interacted mostly with puppets and his acting coach, who was off-screen.

Director Favreau also got in on the action, pretending to be Baloo during the scene for the song “The Bare Necessities”, where the boy and the bear float down a stream singing about forgetting about one’s worries and strife.

That scene was shot in a water tank with what Sethi describes as “a big lump of styrofoam with a fuzzy brown carpet on top that I was just laying on”.

He says: “Jon got in the water, so when Baloo splashes me, it’s really Jon who’s splashing me. Since he actually splashed me, I splashed him back. I had a real reaction and it wasn’t acting.”

For all the light-hearted moments, there are also heavy, emotional scenes in the film with Mowgli’s wolf mother Raksha, voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, Oscar winner for “12 Years A Slave”. With his acting coach standing in for her during filming, Sethi admits it was “hard to get into the emotions”.

But helped along by the rain on set and the sadness of the scene, he recalls how “she would cry and that would make me cry”.

When asked if he plans to act in more films, he says in a professional, rehearsed tone: “I hope to do more, I don’t know yet, but I have some stuff in the works.”

First, like any good Asian kid, he still plans to go to college and even follow in his parents’ footsteps.

“Oh yeah, I’m definitely going to go to school and I definitely want to do everything because I want to be a dentist too. I want to do both – acting and dentistry.”

SONGKRAN CINEMA

n “The Jungle Book” opens in cinemas on Wednesday.

n For clips and other details, check http://www.facebook.com/WaltDisneyThailand or http://www.youtube.com/WaltDisneyStudiosTH.