Muvi Cinemas’ Adon Quinn stepped into Deadline’s Red Sea Studio in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to talk about how rapidly the country’s exhibition sector is growing and what is driving the burgeoning sector into cinemas.
Quinn noted that Muvi opened its first location in Jeddah in August 2019 and now has grown to 21 locations across 10 different cites in the country, with a total of 205 screens to date. It’s an impressive trajectory for a country which endured a 35-year religion-related cinema ban until 2018.
The Muvi CEO noted that whilst international content was growing in Saudi Arabia, “it’s really the local content” from the country as well as content from Egypt that is resonating with the KSA market and driving box office growth.
Related Stories
In answer to this appetite for local content, the company set up its own production banner Muvi Studios, which is headed up by local industry exec Faisal Baltyuor, which has produced Saudi box office hits Sattar and Two For Rent since it opened its doors in 2022.
Watch on Deadline
“The next few years our growth will be more on the content side and driving the local box office,” he said. “I see the Saudi market being much more like South Korea, where local content is over 50% of the market share and I think we will see that. This year [in Saudi Arabia] it’s going to end up at around 34% and I think it will be somewhere between 50-60% of the total box office in the next three years.”
Quinn also touched on its joint venture with leading MENA distributor Front Row Entertainment , which kicked off in 2021 with Liam Neeson action title The Marksman.
Check out the video above.