Esti is Ugly
Some people say beauty is skin deep, but that ugly is to the bone. Well last Sunday, actress America Ferrera won a Golden Globe Award for playing the title character in the hit TV series Ugly Betty, and muted the point all together. It doesn’t matter what people say when you’ve got a globe. However, what makes any of this relevant, is that three years before Ugly Betty premiered, Israeli TV viewers had Esti Ha’mechoeret (Ugly Esti), which starred Riki Blich.
Ugly Betty and Ugly Esti are based on a 1999 Colombian telenovela (Latin American-formatted soap opera), Yo Soy Betty La Fea (I am Betty the Ugly). After that show’s success in Colombia and other Spanish-speaking countries, its format was sold to production companies around the world, including the Israeli company Dori Media Group Ltd.
I guess ugly translates well.
5 comments:
Saw her in Tel Aviv, she is quite a lovely lady.
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“…and muted the point” should say “and mooted the point.”
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I have an “Ugly Betty” website and many people have suspected that “Esti Ha’mechoeret” wasn’t an authorized adaptation, but I’ve never been able to find any evidence that it was or wasn’t. There were many similarities, but of all the international adaptations, “Esti” was the most different. Can someone confirm for me that Dori Media Group Ltd. did indeed pay licensing fees to make “Esti” as an official adaptation?
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gabriela C. Reply:
June 8th, 2009 at 7:00 am
@Tony Lagarto,
Hello Tony, could you please tell me more about the israeli version was so different??? I am doing a paper for my school, and this is an important data. I had read that it was the German and Russian version…
Thank you!
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I have since learned that “Esti” was NOT an officially authorized adaptation of Colombia’s “Yo soy Betty, la fea,” but was an official remake of Mexico’s “El Amor no es como lo pintan.” The Colombian company that owns the rights to “Betty,” RCN, sued Dori Media Group for infringing upon their copyright. I have more information at my website. You can get there by clicking on my name.
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