The Economist December 18th 2021 65
Books & artsSaudicinema
Arabian lights
T
hick cloudsof sand fill the air as a
helicopter swoops low against a back
drop of sandstone cliffs. The crew are re
hearsing a battle scene in “Kandahar”, a
bigbudget Hollywood war film set in Af
ghanistan. But the camera lies: the action
is taking place 2,000 miles from Kandahar,
in Al Ula, on the edge of the Arabian desert.
The location is doubly disorientating.
Cinema was banned in Saudi Arabia in the
early 1980s, under pressure from religious
conservatives. But now the country is mak
ing an unlikely pitch to become a Holly
wood of the desert. Cinemas are opening in
every town. In early December Jeddah
hosted the inaugural Red Sea film festival.
And foreign producers are being tempted
in to shoot their movies, as the govern
ment spends billions on a new local indus
try with international ambitions.
“Shameless and immoral” content
would follow if cinemas were legalised, de
clared Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti in 2017.
Then the country’s only screen showed
documentaries at a science museum. The
next year in Riyadh the first cinema in over
three decades raised its curtain: a branch of
amc, an American chain, was inaugurated
with Marvel’s “Black Panther”. Around 500
more screens have since opened.
The ongoing uturn has three motives.
Saudi Arabia needs to wean its economy off
oil. It must keep its young population con
tent in the face of political repression. And
it wants to improve its dire international
reputation. So the conservative kingdom
has become suddenly serious about the
business of fun. It plans to invest $64bn in
entertainment over the ten years to 2030,
and hopes consumers will double their en
tertainment outlay from 2.9% to 6% of
household spending. The day before the
red carpet was rolled out on the cobbled
streets of Jeddah’s old town for the Red Sea
festival, the seafront corniche hosted the
first Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, with music
by Justin Bieber, a Canadian pop star.
The kingdom’s first task in building a
film industry is to develop a domestic au
dience from scratch. By 2030 it aims to
quadruple its number of screens, to 2,000,
and have a box office worth $1bn. It will hit
that target early, believes David Hancock of
Omdia, a Londonbased research firm.Chains such as amc and vox, an Emirati
brand, are keen to invest in one of the few
cinema markets that is growing amid the
pandemic. Restricted supply and high
spec theatres, with sumptuous seats and
bonechilling airconditioning, allow op
erators to charge the highest prices in the
world, at an average of $18 per ticket (vox
also offers truffled hot dogs and popcorn
sprinkled with gold dust). Omdia forecasts
that by 2025, eight years after it had no box
office at all, Saudi Arabia’s will be the
tenthlargest in the world.
The next step is to bring in foreign film
makers, and learn from them. A few have
already dipped their toes in the sand. In
February Apple tv+ released “Cherry”, a
drama about an American veteran; the
scenes in Iraq were shot in Al Ula. “Kanda
har”, now close to wrapping, is a copro
duction between Thunder Road Films,
which made “Sicario”, and mbc, a Saudi
owned broadcaster. In Tabuk, to the north
west, mbc is working with Hollywood’s
agcStudios on “Desert Warrior”, with a re
ported budget of $140m. Set in seventh
century Arabia, the sandalsandcamels
epic stars Anthony Mackie, who in Mar
vel’s superhero franchise was recently
anointed as Captain America.
Part of the Saudi pitch is the scenery. Al
Ula’s endless dunes, punctuated by rugged
outcrops and gullies, conjure “the Arabia
of imagination”, says Stephen Strachan, a
Briton who runs Film AlUla, a government
body. Nearby are the 2,000yearold tombs
of Hegra (pictured), built by the NabateanA L ULA AND JEDDAH
For more than 30 years, Saudi Arabia banned the movies. Now it is luring
Hollywood to the desert