We return to Muvi Cinemas to learn how the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s premier cinema brand has been growing its audience and its content offering.
It is just over a year since we talked with Muvi Cinemas, the first homegrown cinema brand in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As a company, Muvi Cinema was faced with the prospect of practically building an entire industry from the ground up, as the brand was only possible when the laws not allowing cinemas to operate in the country were rolled back.
While the demand for cinema was immediately apparent, Muvi Cinemas soon faced the same challenge as cinemas around the world- the Covid-19 pandemic. However, even with the closure of cinemas Muvi was able to continue with its construction projects and has successfully opened six more locations in the latter part of 2020.
When we last spoke with Adon Quinn, the COO of Muvi Cinemas, the company boasted 109 screens. When we speak to Quinn again, he is now the CEO of the company, and the progress the firm has made is immediately apparent.
“The past year has been good. We’ve managed to almost double in size going from 109 screens to 205 screens across 21 locations and ten different cities,” Quinn says proudly. “That now sees us at number one exhibitor in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in terms of the number of screens, box office and admissions. We’ve opened our first ‘boutique’ concept cinema, which will be one of a series of cinemas each with a different theme and have also opened the largest location in KSA with 25 screens at Boulevard Riyadh City.”
But while Muvi has been expanding its capacity to show films, and audiences are returning to cinemas in droves, there is still one more lingering after effect of the pandemic.
“We have seen with the right content the audience is willing to come back. We have had great success with Top Gun Maverick, now the biggest film released in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia crossing 1 million admissions, as well as Bahebak, the biggest Egyptian film ever released,” Quinn says. “But the challenge all global cinema markets are facing is content. We’ve had some big films we were expecting in 2022 which have been pushed to next year mainly due to a backlog of post-production and special effects. We are seeing this as a positive for 2023 and 2024, with great content to come but it’s an issue we’ve continued to face in the meantime.”
The first solution Muvi has turned to is to make that content themselves.
“I think the biggest achievement has been the launch of Muvi Studios, focused on producing both Saudi and Egyptian content. We aim to release 15-to-20 films by 2024. Our first two films, one Saudi and one Egyptian, we anticipate releasing in December this year,” Quinn shares. “This year we see local language content making up 30% of the box office market share and with continued delays and reduction in releases out of Hollywood this is important for the market going forward.”
Muvi Studios is focusing on comedies, which have seen a lot of success in the Saudi market.
“We’re looking with the Saudi content to create nice local stories that relate to the local audience. Rather than just remaking other IP we want original content,” Quinn insists. “We have teams working on the development of new scripts to go into production. We will broaden our offering as we go, but as we start out, we’re driven by comedies.”
More Than Movies
Everyone loves the movies, but as Muvi waits for the film industry around the world to catch up on its own backlog, the company is looking into more innovative uses for its screens.
“Certain periods of the year you would typically expect a few tentpole films, but they haven’t come out, so we’ve had to look at alternate content such as bringing some music events into the cinema,” Quinn says. “We have successfully hosted esports events, and our country hosts one of the strongest and most successful esports teams, Team Falcons, and we streamed their live event in the US. We will continue to look at utilising our screens as an events space not just a film space.”
Esports is a field that has matured over the last few years, but Muvi is offering a venue to spectate beyond watching it on your laptop at home.
“We have a direct link from the event organisers through satellite link and show it on the big screen. We’ve had other team members hosting and interacting with the crowd, and it’s a great atmosphere and just brings people together more than if they would be watching it online by themselves at home,” Quinn points out.
As well as esports, Muvi will soon branch out into regular sports, as it hosts the World Cup, showing all the matches live on the big screen. Muvi is also looking to build on its restaurant offering, quite literally providing dinner and a show.
“We continue to look at different organisers doing more food & beverage driven events. We have restaurants linked to our locations where we’re looking at new experiences to launch next year, with experiential entertainment connected to the cinema experience,” Quinn says.
This is all very exciting, but there are still challenges to overcome.
“The global supply chain is something we continue to work around from a food & beverage and construction & development perspective,” Quinn tells us. “We overcome these challenges thanks to a lot of strong partnerships who we have long-term agreements with, and who continue to operate and expand in line with our plans.”
When we last spoke to Quinn, Muvi was practically building an entire industry from scratch in Saudi Arabia. Revisiting them today you can really see how that industry has been taking shape. Most recently, at CinemaCon, the largest and most important convention of movie theatre owners, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was recognised as the leading emerging cinema market in the world, while at the events Middle East equivalent Muvi Cinemas was awarded the title of Leading Exhibitor in 2021.
“We’ll continue with our focus across the ecosystem, strengthening our distribution JV with Front Row Arabia, with still more very exciting locations we have secured for the future,” Quinn says. “We continue to look at what other entertainment options we can bring to the experience, making it an events space more than just a cinema space, with ambitions to expand and maintain that market leadership position.”
