The lavish Saudi TV drama “Muawiya” debuted in March, just in time to ride the surge in TV viewership that hits the region around Ramadan each year. One of the most expensive Arab series ever made, it portrays seventh-century life in the desert, with sweeping overhead shots, charging armies on horseback, and massive flotillas.
“Muawiya” was a ratings hit, but behind the dazzling visuals, it had problems emblematic of Saudi Arabia’s broader TV and movie struggles.
The 30-episode series from MBC Studios, Saudi Arabia’s marquee TV and movie studio, faced years of delays and a ballooning budget, two people familiar with the production told Business Insider. The budget had reached more than $50 million by the time of a previously unreported internal audit dated December 2022, which was viewed by BI.
The show also sparked a religious uproar, particularly among Shiite Muslims, and was banned in Iran and Iraq.
“It’s super edgy, super sensitive,” said Mazen Hayek, who worked for 14 years as a spokesperson for MBC Group — the majority Saudi government-owned parent of MBC Studios — and is now a media consultant based in Dubai.
“Muawiya” centers on the life of Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan, a figure in early Islam who is generally held in high esteem in the Sunni Muslim world — including Saudi Arabia — but loathed by many Shiites. The show, in part, dramatizes the events in the years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad that propelled the two groups into the religious rift that endures to this day.
“Muawiya’s” problems are familiar to MBC Studios. Delays, cost overruns, and political land mines have hampered its ambitious projects for years, according to the audit and BI’s conversations with people who have worked for and with the company.
MBC Studios was a key part of Saudi Arabia’s plan, unveiled in 2018, to spend $64 billion on entertainment projects and venues at home, largely funded by its sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund. But five people close to the company said it hasn’t lived up to its aspirations to be a calling card for the country’s film and TV prowess.
MBC Group founded the studio in 2018 and brought in a former NBCUniversal exec to run it. MBC Studios soon began to jump into projects at a dizzying pace. By the time of the 2022 audit, it had over 100 projects in various stages of production. The audit, which ran over 50 pages, said that while the studio was growing fast, it was undermined by unclear strategy, disorganization, and a lack of internal controls.
The audit identified a litany of issues, including consultants hired without oversight, conflicts of interest, a lack of market research, and companies chosen outside a competitive process.
It recommended tightening production practices to avoid overspending, hiring competitively, and monitoring projects’ performance.
Since that time, MBC Studios has had some wins, particularly with local-language productions.
The five people close to the company told BI it has scaled back some of its original production ambitions, however. They said it’s also been plagued by leadership shake-ups and jettisoned a series of Hollywood experts brought on to take its operations to the next level.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s other big entertainment bet besides MBC Studios, Neom Media — the filmmaking facility in its futuristic city of Neom — has seen some similar problems. It has faced leadership turnover and fallen off the radar in Hollywood, multiple industry insiders said.
Neom Media said in a statement that it’s hosted 40 productions from Hollywood and elsewhere and has plans for more.
“They have a fast-growing local sector that caters toward a local audience,” one person who works in the region said broadly of Saudi Arabia’s entertainment efforts, the two most prominent of which are MBC Studios and Neom Media. But, this person added, “They’re yet to convince the international community that they can make first-class entertainment on the ground.”
MBC Studios didn’t provide comment by press time following multiple requests.
Big movie bets falter for MBC Studios
MBC Studios’ first two big swings in the movie business disappointed.
“Kandahar,” the action film the studio funded starring Gerard Butler, and one of the first US films to be shot in Saudi Arabia, was released in 2023 to tepid reviews and a lackluster box office.
Another, the unreleased “Desert Warrior,” has been stymied by rising costs and delays.
Directed by British filmmaker Rupert Wyatt, who also made “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “Desert Warrior” was the first feature film shot at Neom Media. By the time of the 2022 audit, the budget had reached $140 million. People familiar with the financing characterized that as double its original budget.
Some of the added costs, such as COVID protocols, were due to timing. Others were self-imposed. Infrastructure had to be built in the desert, and crew had to be flown in from other countries. The film went big on talent, enlisting Anthony Mackie of Marvel movie fame and Oscar winner Ben Kingsley, in addition to local stars.
Insiders said fights over creative direction and the film’s length also hung up production. Filming ended in 2022, but there’s been no festival premiere — the film will miss out on another Cannes Film Festival premiere this year — and the movie has yet to get a release date. That type of delay would be virtually unheard of in Hollywood.
Local success and political headaches
MBC Studios has had some local success stories, like “Rashash,” a show about a notorious criminal figure in Saudi Arabia that was well received, and “Inheritance,” billed as the first Arab soap opera.
But Sheikh Waleed Al Ibrahim — the politically connected founder of MBC Group — also wanted to make projects about historical events, which often courted controversy.
In addition to “Muawiya,” there was “Embassy 87,” which revisited the deadly 1987 clash between Saudi police and Iranian pilgrims at Mecca. It was shelved. Then there was “Flight 422,” about the hijacking of a Kuwaiti flight by Hezbollah. That one was removed from streaming after Kuwait demanded it be taken down.
Hayek, the media consultant, said MBC Studios has to strike a tricky balance. It needs to embrace edgy topics to be relevant to audiences and fend off competitors like Netflix and Amazon Prime. That means standing up to “extremists” and “ultra-conservatives” who want to censor its content, Hayek said. But it can’t go too far.
“You don’t push the envelope to the extreme of creating turbulence in society,” he said.
Turning away from Hollywood
Despite these challenges, in early 2024, MBC Group undertook an IPO, part of a boom of other Saudi public offerings. It was considered a big success, raising $222 million and valuing the company at nearly $3 billion.
A prospectus promoting the offering touted the studio’s relationships with Hollywood and its hiring of international talent. Behind the scenes, however, MBC Studios was pulling away from Hollywood, four people close to the company said.
Since the IPO, MBC Studios has cut ties with many of the international players it leaned on. Those included the former Amazon exec who led its film and TV efforts, its head of global series, an Oscar-nominated producer, its longtime distributor, and talent giant CAA.
The studio is now run by a veteran MBC executive, Samar Akrouk, and has cut back its ambitions to focus on lower-risk dramas and comedies, particularly productions for Shahid, its streaming service.
“They’re focused more on local language programs with local language budgets and putting the ‘Desert Warriors’ and ‘Kandahars’ on the back burner,” a person who has worked with the company said.
It’s also a time of transition at parent MBC Group, which replaced its CEO in early April.
Crew and climate hurdles have held back Neom Media
As MBC Studios has withdrawn from Hollywood, Neom Media has also faced challenges in attracting global productions.
Industry insiders describe its facilities as top-notch but say its rebate of up to 40% on production costs — cash grants given to incentivize international and other productions to film there — is still unproven and hard to apply for. Those who get it could find the rebate benefit wiped out by the need to fly in crew members. Between Ramadan and the summer months, when the temperature exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit, shooting can be difficult for a quarter of the year.
Filmmakers wanting a desert landscape may kick the tires on Saudi Arabia but often end up going to more established filmmaking locales like Jordan, Morocco, or Abu Dhabi, where “Dune: Part Two” was shot. Some are put off by Saudi Arabia’s alcohol ban.
Turmoil at the top can’t have helped. Wayne Borg, an Australian exec who was tapped to run Neom Media, was replaced in September after a Wall Street Journal report alleged he made racist and sexist comments about workers. Borg did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“They’ve created the highway but haven’t gotten the cars yet,” said one top Hollywood agent who’s worked extensively in the region.
Neom Media said it’s in advanced discussions with unspecified international productions to film there in 2025. It touted the quality of its facilities and ease of production.
“We’re not just attracting international productions; we’re also becoming a hub for regional content and international content, with projects in the pipeline,” Michael Lynch, another Australian exec who now leads Neom Media, said in a statement.
Some people who have done business in the region preached patience. They compared Saudi Arabia’s efforts to China’s and Qatar’s moves into entertainment and emphasized that it takes decades to build such a business. They said they see progress in Saudi Arabia, especially considering it didn’t even have movie theaters until 2018.
“It would be unrealistic to expect fast results,” someone who has worked in the country said. “They really are at the start of the journey.”
