Saudi Arabia Box Office Outperforms Western Markets This Year So Far as ‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’ Becomes Country’s Highest-Grossing Film

Six years after Saudi Arabia lifted its 35-year ban on cinema, the kingdom continues to make significant strides as the Middle East-North Africa region’s top movie market with audiences flocking to movie theaters lured both by Hollywood blockbusters and a growing number of local hits.

Despite a slight drop-off in box office numbers to date this year, Comscore analysts firmly believe Saudi remains a strong, healthy market, with considerable room for growth.

Ahead of the second edition of the Saudi Film Confex industry conference in the kingdom’s capital of Riyadh that aims to boost the local film industry, Variety spoke to the Comscore team to break down recent figures that show a 5% dip in admissions (13,663,012 in 2024 vs. 14,455,179 in 2023) combined with a 13% drop in box office grosses ($174,431,499 in 2024 vs. $245,486,760 in 2023). The latter is due to a government move to lower ticket prices.

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For comparison, Western markets like the U.S. and the U.K. have shown higher dips in 2024 so far, with the U.S. box office down roughly 15%, U.K. down 16% earlier this year, and Germany down 17%.

“The [Saudi] box office is down this year, but that is very much in line with the rest of the world,” said Comscore analyst Nena Loncar, who noted that elsewhere the drop in moviegoers has been much greater.

“Last year, Saudi lowered the average ticket price as instructed by their film commission and that affected box office returns when compared with admissions,” Loncar said, adding that “admissions [in the kingdom] are only down 5%, which is really not that bad when you think of the rest of the world.”

When compared with major Western territories, the Saudi drop-off is “considerably less,” she said, and the crucial factor driving Saudi moviegoing “is the success of local content.”

The strength of local content is one of Saudi Arabia’s greatest trump cards, highlighted Comscore senior operations manager Nathan Gilligan. “Local product is really strong in Saudi. It is popular even as you go out further into the provinces.”

“In the last two years, Saudi’s investment in local content has considerably grown,” noted Loncar. “This year, they’ve had 19 local titles, which accounts for 8% of their total box office for the year. Last year, it was only 13 titles and also 8%, but that was the figure for the whole year, so this year’s figure will still grow. In 2022, local titles had only 1% of the overall market.”

One such example of a Saudi film performing well at the local box office is “Mandoob,” about a struggling man who becomes an alcohol smuggler. The film, which opened December 2023 following its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and a warm home reception at the Red Sea Film Festival, beat major U.S. hits like “Wonka” on its opening weekend and continued to perform well throughout the following months, amassing more than $2.5 million in 2024 to bring in a total gross of more than $7 million.

While other markets have heavily relied on major pop culture hits like Marvel films “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Venom: The Last Dance” to keep their numbers churning, Saudi audiences are not as attuned to long-standing American franchises. “Studio titles have kept the market in other countries fairly robust but their history doesn’t always translate to Saudi Arabia in the same way,” Gilligan said.

Saudi Arabia is still the market leader in the MENA region in terms of box office, a status the kingdom has attained since movie theaters opened in 2018, following the lifting of the decades-long religion-related ban.

Alongside local content, some major U.S. productions and Egyptian films have a track record of overperforming in the Saudi market. One case in point is this year’s resounding success of Will Smith-starrer “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” which dethroned “Top Gun: Maverick” from the top spot in the kingdom’s box office chart over the past six years.

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” scored a whopping 1.7 million admissions in Saudi following its July 25 release there, compared with “Top Gun: Maverick’s” 1.2 million admissions in 2022. Action films are tried and tested in the region, a genre that not only easily translates between different cultures but also widely appeals to families, with cinema-going largely being a family activity in the region.

“Saudi accounts for 13% of the market total for ‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die.’ U.S. was No. 1, and Saudi was No. 2. That’s quite incredible,” said Loncar, with Gilligan adding that, as a genre, action performs well because “it does what it says on the tin.”

Conversations around the effect of streamers in terms of theatrical attendance, which heavily permeate Western markets, are not as urgent in Saudi as the debate surrounding censorship. “The threshold for Saudi audiences is increasing in terms of content they can see and the content they want to see,” said Gilligan.

“In the Middle East, the threshold for horror is really high,” Gilligan noted. “The flip side is anything romantic, with Disney movies being censored or banned because of public displays of affection.” In 2022, Disney’s “Lightyear” was banned in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Malaysia over a same-sex kiss.

“Anything outside of traditional conventional marriage is a big no-no, but blowing up things and horror films are okay. This may be in tune with what you’re seeing in terms of what is being produced. A romantic comedy outside of the conservative view of what family should look like in Saudi Arabia probably won’t ever be produced.”

Even if there are still challenges when it comes to cementing the cinema-going habit in the more remote regions of the country, Saudi remains a booming market, with the current advantage of industry leads now having a solid five-year period to look back on when making big decisions regarding exhibition in the region.

“[The industry] now has enough numbers to crunch on and the experience to fall back on to make educated decisions about where to place the next 10-screen cinema. At the same time, they are trying to build a local industry, which includes production, distribution and exhibition of local titles,” Gilligan said. “It’s a very interesting time in Saudi.”