With cinemas only being allowed to open in the country in 2017 following a 30-year ban, you’d think Saudi Arabia would try and ease itself back into the movie business to try and lay a solid foundation before thinking of rapid expansion.
Of course, some of the most determined young filmmakers in the nation have other ideas, and they’re already off to a stellar start after an action-packed comedy about a man who decides that weaponizing a midlife crisis into following his dreams to become a wrestler handily crushed some of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters at the local box office.
Telfaz11 co-founders Alaa Fadan, Ibraheem Al Khairallah and Ali Kalthami produced Sattar, which debuted in local multiplexes by knocking Avatar: The Way of Water from the top of the charts to seize the number one spot, and it took just two weeks to become the most successful Saudi production of all-time.
In fact, it sold more nearly as many tickets as Barbie and Oppenheimer combined, with the smash hit caper racking up 903,000 admissions compared to the 679,000 of Christopher Nolan’s epic and the 343,000 who filed in to see Greta Gerwig’s billion-dollar bonanza.
As they revealed to The Hollywood Reporter, though, they’re not happy resting on their laurels, and there’s much more to come as they try to carve out their own corner of the fast-growing market.
“What’s the population of Saudi? It’s more than 30 million. So where are these other 29 million? Maybe they’re waiting for a horror, maybe they’re waiting for a drama. I don’t know, but we need to open these boxes. We can’t claim that to have had the first Saudi film in cinemas, but we can claim to have had the most successful.”
Looking at the success they’ve found already, you wouldn’t bet against them, either.