Sau­di Ara­bia is build­ing a movie econ­o­my from the ground up

At the annu­al any­thing-goes orgy of cross-pro­mo­tion known as Cin­ema­Con, big stu­dio play­ers like Dis­ney and Uni­ver­sal trot out pre­views for their hot new prop­er­ties to foamy-mouthed cheers from the assem­bled atten­dees. But it’s not all super­heroes and movie stars out in Las Vegas.

Though it com­mands a low­er pro­file than a tease for the lat­est X‑Men pic­ture, the most sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment may have very well come from Sau­di Ara­bia. Vari­ety reports that the Gen­er­al Com­mis­sion for Audio­vi­su­al Media has announced plans to pour $35 bil­lion into the nation’s cin­e­ma econ­o­my by the end of 2020, erect­ing 2,500 new movie screens and essen­tial­ly build­ing an indus­try where once there was none.

For a long time, Sau­di Ara­bia was among the last hold­outs in the Mid­dle East, a coun­try with the resources to sup­port a thriv­ing movie busi­ness but no will­ing­ness to do so. Film­mak­er Haifaa al-Man­sour made his­to­ry as recent­ly as 2012 with her debut fea­ture Wad­j­da, the first to be pro­duced entire­ly with­in the con­fines of her native Sau­di Ara­bia; due to gov­ern­men­tal dis­ap­proval and the accord­ing absence of movie the­aters, her film nev­er saw the light of day in the nation she calls home.

Every­thing changed in 2018, when offi­cials declared an end to a cin­e­ma ban that had been in place for 35 years. AMC brought the first cine­plex to Sau­di Ara­bia short­ly there­after, set­ting up shop in Riyadh and cre­at­ing a new prece­dent for com­pa­nies look­ing to take root in the fer­tile market.

This morning’s news is the inevitable fol­low-through on AMC’s break­ing of ground, and is expect­ed to evolve fur­ther when world­wide exec­u­tives con­vene in Riyadh lat­er this month for the Cin­e­ma Build Forum. At that sum­mit on April 14 and 15, a great num­ber of very rich peo­ple will joint­ly fig­ure out how to intro­duce the sev­enth art to the peo­ple of Sau­di Ara­bia in the smoothest and most lucra­tive fash­ion possible.

When glob­al­ism seeps into a hereto­fore iso­lat­ed mar­ket, a polit­i­cal dimen­sion is impos­si­ble to ignore, but this is an espe­cial­ly volatile sit­u­a­tion. The recent death of reporter Jamal Khashog­gi at the hands of Sau­di Ara­bi­an agents caused inter­na­tion­al fric­tion that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has since swept under the rug, but many Amer­i­can cit­i­zens have not for­got­ten the acrimony.

See­ing name-brand com­pa­nies deal­ing with Sau­di gov­ern­ment appa­ra­tus­es could spark a pub­lic out­cry com­pli­cat­ing this advance­ment. The UK-based Vue has already with­drawn from any future deal­ings, cit­ing this exact concern.

But even for those inter­est­ed on a pure­ly artis­tic lev­el, the Sau­di plans to get in the movie game have far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions. This will open up a new chan­nel of cul­tur­al exchange that has nev­er exist­ed before, bring­ing dis­parate cor­ners of the world a lit­tle clos­er togeth­er. At Cannes, at the Oscars, at neigh­bor­hood mul­ti­plex­es, there will soon be a bold new voice with a nation­al sto­ry to tell.