A Growing Fascination With Western Movies and Entertainment in the Middle East
Over the decades, Western media has mostly ignored the Middle Eastern market. Apart from presenting an antagonist or a barren setting, the region has also mostly been left outside the loop. However, with globalization and media companies looking for more and more ways to increase revenues, companies have started to look further east.
China is a well-documented target for Hollywood, with its censorship demands not deterring the largest studios in the United States. In the Middle East, some censorship has also been requested over the years, but for cultural reasons rather than for political means. Despite this, the audience for Western media, movies in particular, in the Middle East continues to grow.
As happens in many nations, Western TV shows are brought over, in this case with Fox or MBC cutting, putting Arabic subtitles or dubs on, and reinventing shows and some movies. Still, even with this in the background, the sudden rise in the consumption of Western movies, music, and even games has been stark. Globalization is one contributor, but so too may be the massive rate of internet penetration in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
In the cinematic arena alone, estimations have already pegged the leading nations of the Middle East to become a leading market in worldwide revenues at the box office. Still, not all of these growing entertainment sectors strictly revolve around imports, with some inspiring more active local scenes, too.
Movies finding an avid crowd in the Middle East
The national cinema industries of the Middle East are all comparatively small in scale. This isn’t to say that high-quality and important films haven’t been produced in the region; it’s just that the output volume, scale, and money involved is far less than in many Western nations. These imported entertainment products are certainly picking up speed, with Saudi Arabia even seeing its box office returns grow last year. The top-grossing films to amass this feat were Tenet, Bad Boys for Life, The Witches, and Monster Hunter.
It shows a growing trend from the last decade or so in the Middle East and North Africa. In fact, just a few years ago, box office revenues across the region climbed past $500 million. The demand is so great now that the MENA Cinema Forum forecasts the UAE and Saudi Arabia joining the upper echelons of global box office revenue, spurred by more venues and more movie imports to come over the next decade.
The demand has been realized and is being met by several new cinemas being opened. Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan, Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia has sought to modernize industries, particularly entertainment, drastically. In 2018, to celebrate the opening of several movie theatres, one of the biggest films of the extensive 22-film superhero movie franchise, Black Panther, was put on for public viewing. You also have the like of Oman looking to bolster the industry by staging its inaugural Gulf Film Festival this year.
Source: Pixabay
Entertainment imports continue to grow in the Middle East
It’s not just Western movies that are becoming popular across the region, though. With such a tremendous amount of internet connectivity, several people across the Middle East are discovering major European online gambling platforms for sports betting and casino gaming. The region’s sportsbook and casino reviews site shows that the most trusted and highest-rated sites are all imports from Europe. Even so, the games and markets appeal to local audiences because the products are fair, the sites offer bonuses, and they accept payments from the MENA region.
While blockbuster movies and online gaming platforms look to remain at the top of their respective sectors in the Middle East, other mediums are seeing imported products being more supplementary. Music is one of the leading examples here. The medium itself is, naturally, much more cultural and localized in its form, but that’s not to say that the nations of the Middle East haven’t been getting amped-up for western artists. The likes of RedFest DXB in the UAE, Jerash Festival in Jordan, Jeddah World Fest in Saudi Arabia, and Yasalam in the UAE all welcome major Western acts to the stage, often alongside the biggest artists of the nations.
A much newer and more inaccessible medium that’s also breaking ground in some MENA nations is that of video gaming. Expensive hardware and software had long priced the medium out of the market, but now several affluent nations have emerged and are taking to gaming. To date, very few video game companies localize their products for the region, officially launching ones that comply with local beliefs, and yet, it’s been seen that gamers of the region have still found their way to other titles that aren’t compliant.
Movies will continue to be the most heavily advertised success story of Western entertainment being popularised in the Middle East. However, it’s clear that just about all of the developed, high-quality, and hyped entertainment products have the potential to win an audience in the region.
