Hollywood is feeling the lure of Saudi Arabian money (…)
Saudi money is also behind a portion of Paramount Skydance’s more than $60 billion bid this week for Warner Bros Discovery, according to Variety, which cites multiple sources, and Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the discussions. A spokesperson for Paramount declined to comment.
Additionally, the kingdom is backing a $1 billion new independent content studio called Arena SNK 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.
Executives from Sony traveled to Saudi Arabia this fall for meetings, a spokesperson confirmed. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts also traveled to the country this fall to attend a conference and view a potential theme park site 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.)
The Red Sea Film Festival 2025 is going on right now (Dec 4-13). The glitterati are partying with Saudi royalty & following the money while blithely ignoring Saudi human rights abuses
For some reason I’m reminded of the new Top Gun’s absolute refusal to name their enemy. The studios’s pathetic cowardice took me right out of the movie.
No more cowardly than the original Top Gun which likewise didn’t name the enemy.
You simply cannot call the country controlling your president as “enemy”.
Fuck hollywood.
Oh my god, so many possibilities!
A slapstick comedy about accidentally killing a journalist in an embassy and desperately trying to get rid of the body by dismembering it and taking it out in suitcases.
Alien invasion movie, it turns out the only thing that kills the aliens is crude oil.
Historical drama about prophet Mohammad: first ever movie where the main character is always just out of frame.
Best I can do is live-action based on a video game.
Hollywood strapped for cash
Have they tried making good movies again?
Have they tried hiring actors that aren’t 50mil? Lots of people will work for less. Much less.
They are literally looking at follower numbers now instead of anything close to talent.
How fucking dare you try to get in the way of millionaires making millions?
If we didn’t pay them that much, then we literally wouldn’t have movies or art.
Me thinks the problem is that very few people go to the movies unless there’s some kind of hook, e.g. their favorite actor or a known franchise.
Direct to streaming movies seldom make Hollywood money.
Well the real problem is that what you’re saying does exist to some extent, and it’s a very easily controlled variable
So when execs and investors look at marvel, they learn the wrong lesson. Endgame threw in an insane number of expensive actors and made an insane amount of money
Instead of looking at the years of setup and buildup of characters in this grand artistic vision, they’re working with spreadsheets to try to min-max the actor to box office numbers
It’s why everything just keeping getting worse. The finance brained people are running the world, and you can always count on them to learn the wrong lesson
I think though that theater tickets being expensive and nice TVs getting cheaper is probably also a reason.
I just feel there is an entire history of movies to prove you fantastically wrong.
They tried remaking everything and have run out of ideas.
Yes, but the remakes of the good movies rarely as good as the original and now we’re on like the 3rd and 4th reboot
Get ready for films to have over-the-top villains show their villainy by being gay again.
And nostalgia for Liquor Prohibition. Alcohol is bad you know.
Ooooh and tradwife heroines! Stay home, modest God-fearing womenfolks.
Ok, so Hollywood will do what they did with China when trying to sell their movies there, Saudi’s will suddenly for some random reason be cool, popular and kind completely out of the blue.
china even have some Westerners parroting for them, john xina and THE ROCK.
yah for pro-saudi propaganda!
weeee.
pro-islamic propaganda.
