| Over the past two weeks, dozens of movie stars, filmmakers and Hollywood executives visited Jeddah, a metropolis on the west coast of Saudi Arabia, for the fourth edition of the Red Sea Film Festival. Vin Diesel and Emily Blunt received awards at the opening ceremony. Spike Lee and Minnie Driver served on the jury. Agents from CAA and WME spoke on panels alongside executives from production outfits such as Fremantle and Anonymous Content.  Emily Blunt and Vin Diesel both received awards at the opening ceremony of the Red Sea Film Festival 2024. Photographers: Tim P. Whitby, Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images These visitors traveled halfway around the world to see whether this Middle Eastern power is open for business. The pullback in spending across media and entertainment has prompted people to search for money in places they'd never looked before. While Wall Street, Silicon Valley and some in Hollywood have been tapping Gulf money for some time, Saudi Arabia has emerged as a hub of financing and production in just the past few years. The state-backed Public Investment Fund has already invested billions in video games and sports, and the country is now offering generous incentives — a rebate of about 40% — to film in Saudi Arabia. Its ambitions aren't modest. The home of Islam has anointed itself "the new home of film." Whether it can live up to that is an open question. Growing acceptanceMany celebrities and some executives still won't visit or do business with the kingdom. The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is fresh in their minds, while the lack of LGBTQ rights is an ongoing concern. Others will take the money without offering a full-throated embrace. Blunt gave a brief speech that said nothing specific. Yet the list of people willing to engage grows every year. Fast and Furious star Michelle Rodriguez has visited the country several times and is a fixture at the festival. This year, longtime collaborator Diesel joined her, as did Saudi regular Will Smith and Wicked star Cynthia Erivo.  Cynthia Erivo on stage during an event at the Red Sea International Film Festival 2024. Photographer: Ernesto S. Ruscio/Getty Images "There might be more familiar faces here than in some awards shows in America," Diesel said during his remarks at the opening ceremony. He had clearly done his research, visiting Al-Ula, a setting for many films, as well as name checking the Saudi culture minister. After showing movies funded by the Red Sea Film Foundation, top figures from both the Cannes Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival attended this year's event, while the Oscars nominated a movie, Four Daughters, that Red Sea cofunded. The country has taken steps towards modernization under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and many of the people in attendance commented that what they saw defied their expectations (in a good way). While the event uses the glitz and glam of red carpets and Hollywood celebrities to garner attention, it has oriented itself around local and regional filmmakers. The opening night film was a Saudi-Egyptian coproduction, and the festival set up meetings for many US producers with Telfaz11, which makes movies for Netflix and released one of the most successful Saudi movies in history last year. An immature industryHollywood's growing interest in Saudi Arabia bears some resemblance to its outreach to China 15 years ago. China opened up to Hollywood long enough to train its population and build up a local industry. It then stopped investing as much outside of its borders and now shows fewer Hollywood movies in its own cinemas. The Gulf States are more open to the world than China, and they have also been a bit more open about their intentions. Saudi Arabia has said it doesn't want to be seen as a blank check. It has invested money into one-off productions with major stars and seen little benefit. The Red Sea Film Foundation wants to invest in projects and companies interested in nurturing their local industry. Johnny Depp and Guy Ritchie have shot more than one project in the country and vow to return. Some of the celebrities and executives who attended the event this year specifically asked to meet with emerging filmmakers.  Johnny Depp attends the "Modì, Three Days on the Wing of Madness" screening at the Red Sea International Film Festival 2024. Photographer: Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images Yet it's one thing to get some celebrities to show up for a red carpet and it's another to get them to spend months shooting a movie. Putting aside concerns about civil rights and free speech, the country has to give people a good reason to film in Saudi Arabia. Save for a few local success stories, many of which were born on YouTube, there's almost no local infrastructure or crew. Cinema was illegal until six years ago and is still not a mass phenomenon.The immaturity of the market was on full display the opening night of the festival. The awards ceremony started almost two hours late. As it ended, about 80% of the room stood up and left. The opening night film played to a largely empty theater. In the following days, I attended a screening, two panels and two conversations with major celebrities that all occurred in largely empty auditoriums. Throw in the searing heat during many months of the year, and it's not the most comfortable place to shoot. There are plenty of other places, whether it's the UK, Australia or Canada, that offer financial assistance in locations that stars see as more familiar and hospitable. The Saudi incentives aren't as easy to access due to the difficulty of getting the rebates bonded and backed by major banks, and Saudi Arabia ia still more conservative than its peers in the Gulf. Alcohol isn't sold or consumed in public, though that's starting to change. All of these signs point to a long, slow process. South Korea spent decades investing in its local industry and is just now seeing the fruits of its labor on the global stage. Qatar has had a film festival for more than a decade and it's still searching for its place on the global stage. Saudi Arabia has recently had to scale back some of its planned economic reforms due to a budget deficit. And yet, many of the folks who traveled to Jeddah saw great potential. While some of the screenings weren't full, it was always hard to find a seat in the souk, the festival's hub for meetings. The best of Screentime (and other stuff) | David Zaslav tries to keep the skeptics at bay | Warner Bros. Discovery is restructuring again, turning its three divisions into two: TV networks and studios/streaming. HBO, which is a network, will fall under streaming and studios. Channing Dungey, who oversees both the TV studio and many TV networks, will continue to oversee both even though they are in different divisions. Without providing specifics, the company said changes are coming to its board. Confused? The details here don't really matter. Warner Bros. is trying to keep its share price moving higher. The company is separating its profitable but shrinking TV networks, which are now toxic on Wall Street, from the rest of the business. It's also trying to position itself for potential deals. The folks at MoffettNathanson weren't too impressed, arguing this doesn't change the fundamentals of the business. "The company will still rely on linear network cash" to pay down debt and invest in streaming. (I wrote about this conundrum earlier this year.)  David Zaslav Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg When WBD announced this restructure, it identified financial advisors and law firms working with it to help. That is… unusual. Analyst Rich Greenfield offered a theory: Zaslav was attempting to deter potential activist investors. There have been rumors of activists for more than a year, ones that picked up again when the stock priced bottomed out around $6 a share. All of Zaslav's reshuffling has lifted the company's share price this year, but it's still down about 50% from when they created Warner Bros. Discovery. The new advertising oligopolyThe global advertising market will surpass $1 trillion for the first time next year. Three companies — Alphabet, Meta and Amazon — account for 41% of sales. That's more than $400 billion. If you want to know why advertising agencies are consolidating, that's a big reason! Streaming surgesStreaming accounted for 41.6% of TV viewership in November, a new record. That's despite the World Series (on broadcast) and an election (historically a linear TV event). YouTube leapt to a new high of 10.8% as lots of people followed the election in clips instead of live. Netflix gained share thanks to the Tyson-Paul fight. The Roku Channel was as popular as Disney+. Max lost share from a year ago and is smaller than either. Let's compare those programming budgets… One big trend to consider: Free services are growing a lot faster than paid ones. Compare the share of TV viewing for YouTube, Tubi, Roku and Pluto and those for paid services over the last two years. Two Netflix scooplets: Narnia and licensingScoop #1: Netflix is targeting a December 2026 release for The Chronicles of Narnia movie from Greta Gerwig. Negotiations for a theatrical release with Imax and Gerwig continue. Everyone wants to do it. Netflix is still figuring out the best way to explain the move to other filmmakers; it doesn't want this to be seen as a precedent. But Imax is only for a certain kind of film. Most Netflix movies would never get an Imax release. (There's no reason the company couldn't use the Imax for its quarterly tentpole, but the streaming service still has no interest in theaters.) Scoop #2: Netflix has hired former YouTube executive Lori Conkling to oversee all of its film and TV licensing in the US. Now that other Hollywood studios are once again keen to sell to Netflix, the company wanted a seasoned person to execute those deals. Conkling was in charge of sports and entertainment partnerships at YouTube, where she was one of the key players in the company's deal for NFL Sunday Ticket. (Though I had thought her arrival might augur more sports deals at Netflix, the company said she's not working on sports.) The No. 1 movie in China is…The feminist comedy Her Story. It topped the box office three weekends in a row, beating out US sequels such as Gladiator II and Moana 2. 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The best movie I saw in Jeddah was Superboys of Malegaon, a Hindi film that opened in India earlier this year. One of India's top production companies made it. I spent a lot of time on planes and watched Napoleon Dynamite for the first time in years. It holds up. | 
Mashadipati Location Hotel Clove is located in the heart of Bandung, in a ...
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