Hollywood is feeling the pull of Saudi Arabian money.
Stars are accepting it, and many will receive checks for attending this week’s Red Sea Film Festival. The studios are interested in it and their executives travel to the kingdom to meet about possible deals. And at the highest levels, Saudi money could end up helping finance a massive media merger.
For the entertainment industry, Saudi funding has become more attractive as other sources of money have dried up following the Covid pandemic of 2020, the dual strikes of actors and writers of 2023 and the shift in audience habits from film and television to social media.
“Money is good, that’s the Hollywood perspective,” said entertainment attorney Schuylar (Sky) Moore of Greenberg Glusker. “For the Saudis, it’s about building their own film industry, and they’re trying to get the expertise and the people there.”
But Saudi Arabia’s controversial human rights record makes the relationship uncomfortable for some in the West, and a sensitive topic to talk about in Hollywood, where more than a dozen insiders, including agents, producers, executives, bankers and publicists, refused to go on the record about the flood of potential Saudi money.
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This week, many of them are heading to the kingdom’s coastal city of Jeddah for the Red Sea Film Festival, which runs until December 13. In recent years, the festival, a nonprofit funded by Saudi government money, has paid talent up to $2.5 million to attend at least part of the event, according to two sources with knowledge of the deals who were not authorized to speak on the record about them.
A spokesperson for the Red Sea Film Festival disputed the figure, calling it “inaccurate and unrepresentative.”
“The festival does not reveal the details of any of its commercial deals, but we occasionally engage with talent on a contractual basis for work we ask them to do at the festival, including labs, conversations and mentoring sessions with emerging regional talent,” the festival said in a statement. “The Foundation is, first and foremost, committed to fostering talent in underrepresented markets, as evidenced by our program and the filmmakers we support year-round.”
This year, festival organizers announced that the nine-day event will feature a jury consisting of “Anora” Oscar-winning director Sean Baker and actor Riz Ahmed; stage conversations with actors such as Ana de Armas, Dakota Johnson, Kirsten Dunst, Jessica Alba and Adrien Brody; and tributes to actors Sigourney Weaver and Michael Caine. Many of the stars are being promoted on the festival’s official Instagram page. A diverse slate of films will be screened including “Couture,” starring Angelina Jolie, Paramount’s “The Spongebob Movie: Search for Squarepants” and Jordan’s Oscar nomination, “All That’s Left of You,” which received financial support from the Red Sea Foundation.
Saudi money is also behind a portion of Paramount Skydance’s $60 billion-plus bid this week for Warner Bros. Discovery, according to Variety, which cited multiple sources, and Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the discussions. A Paramount spokesman declined to comment.
Additionally, the kingdom is backing a new $1 billion independent content studio called SNK Arena launched in October by former Lionsgate executive Erik Feig, and a $55 billion deal for video game maker Electronic Arts announced in September. A representative for Feig declined to comment.
Sony executives traveled to Saudi Arabia this fall to meet, a spokesperson confirmed. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts also traveled to the country this fall to attend a conference and view a possible theme park in Qiddiya, a tourism megaproject in Riyadh province, according to a source with knowledge of Roberts’ trip who was not authorized to speak on the record about it. (Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which is the parent company of NBC News.)
While there are many deals in discussion, Moore noted that a major Hollywood studio has yet to close one with Saudi financing. If they do, the entertainment lawyer said he suspects the deal will depend on filming in the region, to help build the kingdom’s local production infrastructure.
Hollywood is not alone in its attempts to raise funding from the Middle East: both the sports and gaming worlds have taken advantage of Saudi money. Critics, including Human Rights Watch, an international nongovernmental organization, and the Atlantic Council, a research institute, have accused the Saudi government of engaging in so-called “sportswashing,” investing in golf and soccer to improve its international image.
In 2027, WrestleMania will take place in Riyadh, marking the first time WWE will hold its signature pay-per-view match outside of North America. In a statement announcing the deal in September, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, WWE’s chief content officer, said the General Entertainment Authority (GEA) in Saudi Arabia and its president, Turki Alalshikh, “have had a massive impact on the world of sports and entertainment.” He described them as “phenomenal partners of WWE.”
Video game giant Electronic Arts announced in September that it will be acquired for $55 billion in an all-cash deal by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners (the investment company run by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner).
From the Saudi perspective, spending on the entertainment industry is a way to reduce the country’s economic dependence on oil and improve its image globally, all of which is part of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s modernization plan for the kingdom called Vision 2030.
In September, the Saudi Film Fund was renamed Riviera Content, with a mandate to finance and produce films with major global studios, bolstered by a 40% tax incentive for production in the kingdom.
“A lot of this is due to the feeling in Saudi Arabia that their story is not being told well,” said an entertainment industry negotiator who has done business in Saudi Arabia, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
In 2018, the collaboration between Saudi Arabia and Hollywood was just beginning to get underway when, according to US intelligence services, Crown Prince Mohammed approved an operation to assassinate Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a fierce critic of his government.
In the months before the murder, the crown prince had ended a 35-year ban on access to movie theaters and traveled to Los Angeles to meet with News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch and Disney CEO Bob Iger. The Saudi Film Council had made a splashy speech at the Cannes Film Festival, handing out location guides to Saudi films and a book with data on the young, digitally savvy Saudi audience.
Khashoggi’s murder chilled the nascent cultural relationship and led Endeavor Content, the film and television company behind shows like “Severance” and “Killing Eve,” to pull out of a $400 million deal with the Saudi government in 2019.
Hollywood’s difficult financial environment and the re-election of President Donald Trump, who has a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, have reopened the door to talks.
In November, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison attended a White House dinner for Crown Prince Mohammed, the Saudi leader’s first visit to the White House since Khashoggi’s murder.
For Western talent, however, Saudi money still raises deeper questions.
In September, American comedians including Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart and Pete Davidson faced backlash from fans, human rights activists and fellow comedians for performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival.
Human Rights Watch accused the Saudi government of using the event “to divert attention from its brutal crackdown on freedom of expression and other widespread human rights violations.”
In October, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel pressed comedian Aziz Ansari about his decision to perform at the festival.
“People, especially a lot of comedians, are very upset, because the people who paid them to come to this are not good people,” Kimmel said. “It’s a pretty brutal regime. They’ve done a lot of horrible things.”
“There are people there who don’t agree with the things the government is doing, and to attribute the government’s worst behavior to those people, that’s not fair,” Ansari said of his decision, noting that he asked his aunt who used to live in Saudi Arabia. “Just like there are people in America who don’t agree with the things the government is doing.”
The talent expected to attend the Red Sea Film Festival in the coming days has not commented publicly on their upcoming plans.
Despite the stars on the bill, many of the actors with films screening at the Red Sea this year have declined to attend.
That includes Jolie, whose representative did not say why she will be absent from the event, and Pierce Brosnan and Jude Law, whose representatives cited scheduling issues.
