Not even five years have passed since Saudi Arabia first opened up for tourism in 2019 and, yet, the country’s entertainment industry seems to have evolved at an astronomical rate. With multimillion-dollar film and TV project development initiatives available to both local and international companies, high rates of content consumption and an overwhelmingly young population with broad access to smartphones and increasingly affordable internet rates, the kingdom’s media boom currently attracts the attention of entertainment conglomerates both local and multinational.
“It’s a very exciting time to be here. With the boom and now post-pandemic and a very young population, so many things are changing. Many things are changing worldwide but, in Saudi, it’s changing rapidly,” says the general manager of MBC Studios Saudi Arabia, Zeinab Abu Alsamh. The MBC Group is the largest media company in the Middle East and North Africa and, just last year, moved its headquarters from Dubai to the Saudi capital of Riyadh to “focus on the opportunities and try to be close to the field itself to know exactly how to grow in a healthy and optimal way,” Alsamh says.
The Saudi native sees an opportune chance in the thriving industry to promote stories from regions of the country that have not been previously depicted onscreen. “I could tell you all the traditions of southern American states like Texas because we’ve been consuming American media for a very long time and they are great at it, but I wouldn’t know the wedding traditions of the south of Saudi. When I get scripts from the south or east of Saudi, it’s very exciting to me as a local because I get to learn.”
The MBC Group recently experienced great success with “Rashash,” an eight-part Saudi Arabian drama series based on the true-life story of Rashash Al-Otaibi, a Saudi drug trafficker and murderer who terrorized locals in the 1970s and 1980s. The series featured an all-Saudi cast in the lead roles. “Rashash,” available on the MBC Group streaming platform Shahid, has sparked the company’s interest in more gangster thrillers and genre series in general.
“We are developing a few titles inspired by gangs and this underworld of drifting with cars. Our youth is very skilled when it comes to cars, they are the best in the world, so it’s a good time to show something along the lines of fast cars and crime,” Alsamh says.
Genre series are of great interest to the MBC Group. The company is working on the fantasy series “Rise of Witches,” an adaptation of the eponymous bestselling novel by Saudi author Osamah Almuslim. The series is expected to have the largest-ever special effects budget for a Saudi production, and it marks the first fantasy project at MBC, which Alsamh labels a “big, exciting experiment.”
Since launching in Saudi Arabia in 2016, Netflix has steadily walked the line between global and local. The last two years saw the streamer invest heavily in licensed content with a distinct focus on building catalogs that resonate across the Saudi region. “There’s an incredible caliber of talent and creativity in the Arab world, particularly in Saudi, and many have beautiful, layered stories to tell,” says Nuha Eltayeb, Netflix’s director of content for Middle East, Africa and Turkey. “The Saudi entertainment landscape is rapidly evolving, and we are proud to be working with established and new voices to tell stories that have not been told before and provide them with an opportunity to gain fans at home and globally.”
Netflix marked a milestone in the kingdom with the September launch of “Tahir’s House,” the first Saudi TV show produced by the U.S. giant. The eight-episode series follows a family of amateur entrepreneurs who must come together to convert their failing fish shop into a thriving business but face a series of challenges on the way. Directed by Sultan Al Abdulmohsen, the show is influenced by successful American comedies such as “Modern Family,” and has adopted the Hollywood model of a writers’ room to have different local voices feed into the story.
Following the release of “Tahir’s House,” Netflix is set to premiere yet another Saudi-based series this month, called “Crashing Eid.” The four-episode comedy is set in Jeddah during a family’s Eid celebrations.
“We believe that great storytelling transcends borders and we’ve seen that happen with Arabic content like ‘AlRawabi School for Girls,’ ‘Finding Ola’ and ‘Dubai Bling,’” El Tayeb says.
On top of acquiring and producing local stories, Netflix still finds great success with its international library titles in the region and has sought to bank on the familiarity of U.S. formats when designing its regional content.
This combination of the familiarity of the global and the specificities of the local is also on the mind of Starzplay CEO Maaz Sheikh, who recently announced the launch of the ambitious reality show “The Italian Dream.” For the unscripted series, Starzplay, one of the region’s leading subscription video- on-demand services, joined forces with the Lega Serie A, Italy’s premier professional soccer league, to find the Middle East and North Africa region’s next soccer star that will culminate with the winner being granted a spot to play on one of the world’s greatest sporting stages.
Starzplay acquired the rights to stream the Lega Serie A live and exclusively in 2022, and the success they found inspired the entertainment company to develop the format for “The Italian Dream.”
“It seemed like a far-fetched idea to get the Italian League to commit to this, but I think two things helped,” Sheikh says. “One is that the Middle East is one of their biggest markets per capita in terms of consumption, so it is in their interest to continue to build their brand, and at the same time they’ve seen the success of Arab players in the last FIFA World Cup, so they know the talent base is here as well.”
“The Italian Dream” will look for participants in a series of capitals in countries like Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt, and features mentors from Lega Serie A. This, Sheikh believes, feeds into the aspirational potential of the format. “We’re a UAE-based company, so we wanted to do something where we felt we were giving back to the community. You are giving the audience a type of excitement and an experience that money can’t buy. You could be the richest kid in the world, but you cannot find a guaranteed spot in the Italian league.”
Sheikh is hopeful “The Italian Dream” will do well in Saudi Arabia, their biggest market in terms of subscribers and a country that has soccer deeply embedded in its cultural and social fabric. “Anything we do has to be successful in Saudi. We’re hoping to draw significant talent from Saudi as it’s not only the largest market for us, but also one of the ones that’s growing the fastest. The population is young, the internet is widely available and bandwidth rates are becoming very accessible. All things are adding up, from infrastructure to the regulatory framework, to open things up in a positive direction.”
