EXCLUSIVE: British producer OR Media, which has made reveals for the Saudi state broadcaster and BBC, together with Tom Hollander-starring docu-feature Path of Blood, has laid off 14% of its workforce and did not pay freelancers to the tune of what sources estimate may very well be a whole lot of 1000’s of kilos.
Deadline has spoken with half a dozen present and former OR Media workers, who paint a chaotic image of an organization in a difficult monetary place. Now we have additionally seen emails from CFO Andrew Wallace to senior workers saying “we’re having troublesome conversations with numerous individuals” and urging them to be “alert to the danger of malicious rumor.”
An OR Media spokesman blamed a “main” unnamed UK consumer, which introduced that “it was making important and quick cuts to its operations.” “While not disputing its money owed to us or its need to proceed commissioning movies from us sooner or later, it unilaterally imposed a particularly tight fee plan on us,” added the spokesman. “We’re within the technique of signing a lot of new contracts and these will allow us to return to our regular fee phrases within the very close to future, start reengaging workers, and hopefully restore among the injury that has been finished.”
The quantity laid off totals 18, the spokesman mentioned, which accounts for round 14% of the circa-200 workers on the London-based, near-30-year-old firm.
Deadline is instructed that quite a few freelancers and suppliers haven’t been paid for months, with estimates from insiders putting the entire owed throughout the board within the a whole lot of 1000’s of kilos. Sources have instructed us that some individuals had been knowledgeable through textual content messages or emails late into the night that they had been shedding jobs or weren’t having contracts renewed.
The OR Media spokesman acknowledged that some freelancer contracts had been allowed to run out, whereas “we’re additionally behind the place we wish to be with our freelancer and provider funds.” “This has been a deeply regrettable and troublesome course of regardless of our efforts to deal with it as professionally and supportively as doable,” the spokesman mentioned.
OR Media is run by Saudi filmmaker Adel Alabdulkarim. Alabdulkarim can also be the only director of Volant Media, the corporate that owns TV community Iran Worldwide, which has prior to now been investigated by Ofcom. That community generated headlines earlier this 12 months when certainly one of its TV presenters was attacked in London by males believed to be performing for the Tehran regime.
OR Media’s web site lists reams of documentary collection and flicks produced throughout the previous three a long time. It has made the likes of Hajj: Journey of a Lifetime for the BBC, Saudi Arabia’s Conflict on Al Qaeda for Al Arabiya and God’s Enterprise for Al Jazeera. In 2018, the corporate produced Path of Blood, an award-winning documentary collection drawn from a hoard of jihadi home-movie footage that was captured by Saudi safety companies. Night time Supervisor star Hollander represented the “voice of Jihad” within the docu-feature, which was narrated by English actor Samuel West. The ‘in manufacturing’ part of OR Media’s web site contains reveals titled Saving Yemen for Saudi-owned Arabic information channel Al Arabiya and one other titled Saudi Arabia’s Conflict on Al Qaeda, this time for Saudi TV.
One senior OR Media insider mentioned issues had been raised by a lot of staff members over a scarcity of psychological well being provision for individuals engaged on tasks that function disturbing footage. “I struggled to sleep for per week after watching among the footage,” they added. “It’s been an enormous gripe.”
An OR spokesperson mentioned nobody had raised points over disturbing footage and “we not often work with materials that may very well be described as grotesque.”
