Backing native movies is vital to driving the expansion of the Saudi cinema business, based on Adon Quinn, the CEO of Saudi exhibitor Muvi Cinemas.
Talking at this month’s Saudi Movie Confex, Quinn famous Saudi movies thus far this 12 months account for a powerful 23% of field workplace within the nation. That is regardless of native movies solely representing 4% of the overall variety of releases in Saudi cinemas.
Final 12 months, Saudi movies accounted for 8% of the nation’s whole field workplace.
“The expansion of this business goes to be native,” stated Quinn, talking on a panel at Confex.
“The most important factor that we will do for the general business – and what’s going to assist with the growth of the field workplace and the cinema business in Saudi – is supporting native content material.”
Saudi hits this 12 months embody comedy Shabab Al-Bomb 2, the highest-grossing native movie to this point, grossing $7.3m (SAR 27.2m) from over 603,000 tickets bought, based on the Saudi Movie Fee (SFC). It’s the second-highest-grossing movie of any nationality of the 12 months to this point, behind solely Lilo & Sew.
Hobal is the second largest movie, with $6.5m (SAR 24.5m) from over 587,200 tickets bought, whereas Es’af ranked third with $4.9m (SAR18.5m) from 385,900 tickets.
In response to the SFC, the cinema sector within the Kingdom generated revenues of $119.5m (SAR448.1m) through the first half of 2025, with 9.1 million tickets bought throughout numerous cities within the Kingdom.
Lilo & Sew topped the checklist of highest-grossing movies in Saudi cinemas within the first half of the 12 months with box-office revenues of $8.5m (SAR31.8m) adopted by Shabab Al-Bomb 2.
Quinn stated: “There have been so many examples of Saudi movies this 12 months and prior to now few years the place we see such a excessive improve in first-time clients. Saudi movies inform tales which resonate with individuals and brings them to the cinema for the primary time. That’s the place habits will probably be developed. For us, it’s actually about looking for ways in which we will help native filmmakers and to help extra movies being made.”
Quinn stated Muvi Cinemas goals so as to add 60 screens to its circuit subsequent 12 months, “which is able to allow extra individuals to purchase tickets and allow extra returns for filmmakers to have the ability to make higher high quality, larger budgets and extra movies”.
Muvi Cinemas launched its first cinema in Jeddah in 2019 and now has 23 areas throughout the Kingdom. It additionally has a distribution arm and funds movies. To this point, it has backed 4 Saudi movies and three Egyptian movies.
Quinn was talking on a Saudi Movie Confex panel alongside Megabox’s Yong Seok Nam and CJ 4DPLEX’s Jun Bang.