Sumera B Reshi
The entertainment landscape of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is changing in the garb of the modernization drive primarily led by Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS), who wants to offer his people some incentive that was previously a big no and that is, fun. Lo and behold! Saudi Arabia is preparing to pump $64 billion into its emerging entertainment industry as part of Vision 2030, the social and economic reform program spearheaded by MBS.
The faces are bright, and the ambience is very warm as the lights go out, and as a beam of light hits the white screen, entertainment-starved Saudis sit in cozy seats with their eyes wide open experience something they have been denied for decades, an experience of reel world – a trip to a multiplex.
This is the second reform fronted by Mohammad Bin Salman. After a decree allowing women to drive, the authorities in KSA have hinted cinemas would soon be permitted as part of ambitious reforms for a post-oil era that could shake up the rigid Kingdom’s cultural scene; however, the move will face opposition from conservatives.
Early cinemas were viewed as sinful by religious hardliners. The hardliners and conservatives see cinema as a threat to cultural and religious identity and in the 1980s that were instrumental in shutting them down.
In view of the MBS’s reform plans, Saudi Arabia’s highest cleric warned of the consequences of cinemas and said that they would ‘corrupt morals. Nonetheless, authorities turned a deaf ear to all these predictions, and it seems they have vowed to jump into the modernization & reform bandwagon.
Cinemas existed in Saudi Arabia’s major cities about half-a-century ago. Westerners working for the California State Oil Company (later Aramco) were the first to introduce cinemas to the Saudis, but Iranian revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 had its ripple effects on Saudi Arabia as well. Prior to 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini established an Islamic theocracy in Iran and Juhayman al-Otaybi seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca—Saudi Arabia was a moderate kingdom that respected the diversity and civil rights of its subjects but after that things changed dramatically.
Why not then and why now? The statistical figures released by Saudi authorities reveal that approximately seven million Saudis travel abroad for vacationing annually, so Riyadh decided to target a lucrative market with domestic entertainment initiatives.
Roughly, two-thirds of the Saudi population are under the age of 35, “thus there is the need for a Qiddiya project to provide them with entertainment,” said Fahd bin Abdullah Tounsi, project Secretary-General. According to Tounsi, the project will save about $30 billion, which will be used to develop the domestic economy and create job opportunities for Saudi youth.
Now Saudi Arabia plans to open 30-40 multiplexes in 15 cities within five years under a deal with AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC is an America pay television channel). Saudi authorities have set a goal of 100 multiplexes with more than 2, 500 screens by 2030.
By lifting the ban on multiplexes, Saudi authorities will explore untapped and lucrative revenue stream since the authorities know that its people are hungry for films. As per a survey conducted in 2014, Saudis watch films online on a weekly basis and according to the government data, Saudis spend $30 billion, which is close to 5 per cent of GDP on entertainment and hospitality elsewhere in the Middle East. The favorite entertainment destination for Saudis is Dubai and Bahrain.
Since the Saudi population is incredibly young and a greater chunk of its people is under 30, so young Saudi film makers are also making waves. For instance, Haifaa Al Mansour’s Wadjda is the first-female created film and an Oscar entry. Thus, analysts believe that the entertainment industry is too profitable for Saudi’s to ignore and that is why it created a $2.7 billion entertainment form and invested $64 billion in its entertainment industry.
Saudi Arabia began to witness a change in earnest last year when the authorities announced the founding of more than $26 billion to expand the Grand Mosque in Mecca to accommodate more pilgrims during the Haj week. Moreover, it plans to spend $3.5 billion on a nearby hotel with 10,000 rooms and would be the world’s largest hotel.
Additionally, Saudi Arabia is spending $80 billion in Mecca alone and it includes the Mecca-Medina rail link and is termed as the Kingdom’s $500 billion ‘megacity’ project, the most ambitious project till date.
As stated by the Saudi authorities, the project is named as NEOM and will be home to a vast array of different companies from biotech firms to restaurants and art museums and will be completely powered by renewable energy. The project will be financed by the Saudi government and private investors and will connect the country to Jordon and Egypt.
While announcing the project, the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh in 2018, Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman said that “this place is not for conventional people or conventional companies, this will be a place for the dreamers of the world. The strong political will and the desire of a nation. All the success factors are there to create something big in Saudi Arabia.”
Saudi Arabia is aiming to write a new chapter in its history with a wide range of developments to position it as a leisure destination besides pilgrim destination for residents and overseas visitors. It wants to explore unexplored revenue through entertainment. And its pivotal aim to plough $64 billion in its entertainment industry is to reduce its dependency on oil.
Quite recently, Saudi Arabia organized concerts, a Comic-con pop culture festival and a mixed gender national day celebration that saw people dancing in the streets to thumping electronic music for the first time. It is irrational to keep people away from entertainment in the age of the internet.
Therefore, the Saudi delegation, led by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman thought of hooking his people to its soil and booked the entirety of the Four Seasons as part of a lavish three-week the US charm offensive. Los Angeles’ media moguls played host: Bin Salman, 32, reportedly dined at Rupert Murdoch’s Bel Air estate with five major studio heads (and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson).
Entertainment pundits say that Hollywood has a long history of taking dumb money outside investors who underestimate the volatility of movie returns. So Saudi Arabia is the new target. Hollywood and other entertainment industries are looking to the oil rich and reform hungry Kingdom to help finance projects. Hollywood had China with it and in 2016, Chinese money in Hollywood totaled roughly $5 billion and but by 2017 that shrunk to some $500 million, as the Chinese government cracked down on foreign investments.
As of now, deals with China have completely dried up, and the Saudis are stepping up to the plate. Saudi Arabia’s $230 billion sovereign wealth vehicle, the Public Investment Fund, is on track to invest hundreds of millions in Hollywood as the first new screens go up in the Kingdom.
Its hallmark purchase is a soon-to-close $400 million deal for an estimated 7 per cent in Endeavor, the sprawling entertainment conglomerate that includes powerful talent agency WME, several live event brands and burgeoning production business. Analysts opine that Saudi’s are now the new Chinese.
Since MBS won’t leave any opportunity to earn beyond oil, they formed the General Entertainment Authority and announced a new Cirque du Soleil show in Saudi Arabia. This surge in foreign partnerships is aimed to kick start the Gulf nation’s entertainment industry with movies and live events. This is the move which MBS took to reform and modernize Saudi Arabia, diversify its economy and above all consolidate his power.
Besides being a hub of religious activity, Saudi Arabia is looking to the entertainment sector with a view to diversifying its economy away from petroleum, which has recently suffered from a decrease in international prices. Since Mohammad bin Salman was made crown prince in 2017, the kingdom has stepped up its search for alternative means of income.
“Public cinemas will aid in the diversification of the economy and help it grow in the long run,” MBS said.
The country’s first public cinema opened in April 2018. Since then, Saudi officials have said they want to open 40 more movie theaters within the next five years. Plans to reduce the country’s dependence on oil constitute a major plank of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, a 15-year economic plan unveiled in 2016.
On Apr. 29, Saudi officials formally inaugurated the Qiddiya project in western Riyadh, which, when completed in 2022, will be one of the world’s largest entertainment parks. The project is built on 334 square kilometers of land; the park is expected to be one of the region’s most expansive entertainment complexes
Planner hopes that by 2030, the park will draw as many as 17 million visitors annually. What’s more, the project is expected to raise Saudi Arabia’s profile as a regional tourism destination while creating 57,000 new job opportunities. Qiddiya, about an hour’s drive from Riyadh, is being built on a 334 sq km (8,400-acre) site, making it 2-1/2 times the size of Disney World.
Saudi’s strongest and closest ally the UAE has already built theme parks. Motion gate, a joint venture in Dubai between Dream works Animation, Sony Pictures and Lions gate, opened in 2016, while a Warner Bros. Theme park in Abu Dhabi is set for a summer debut. Universal Studios serves as a cautionary tale: Its mammoth $1.2 billion, a seven-million-square-foot theme park within planned complex Dubai land, which broke ground in 2008, was scrapped when the economy tanked.
At present, Saudi Arabia is not only experiencing a distraction of its royal succession and a proxy war in Yemen between Riyadh and other regional power, including the UAE, but it is also offering a disingenuous pledge to liberalize in exchange for the US political support. Khashoggi is the latest casualty of this pattern—and there’s no reason to expect the outcome will be any different.
All these reforms are Mohammad bin Salman’s tireless efforts to establish himself the de facto heir apparent and to put a liberal face in from the West, especially its all-time friend the US and when it comes to pose as a liberal and a modern society, religion takes a back seat. After all absolute power corrupts absolutely.
