MBC Studios’ Zeinab Abu Alsamh Talks Rapid Growth Of Saudi Industry, Opening Up Programming Options & Opportunities For Women — Deadline Disruptors

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Zeinab Abu Alsamh has only been general manager of MBC Studios Saudi Arabia for a year but with the blazing speed at which the local industry is growing, she says it has felt more like five.“Things are happening a lot faster than I anticipated,” the Saudi native says. “But it’s great because for the last 40 years we haven’t had our stories come out—I’m not even talking about the world—I’m talking about come out even to us.”Abu Alsamh, who previously was the chief commercial officer of the Saudi Broadcasting Authority, is responsible for overseeing all Saudi content and development projects for MBC Studios, the in-house production arm of the Saudi-owned free-to-air network giant MBC, as well as expanding the content production industry in the kingdom.With 13 different regions and a population of 30 million people, two-thirds of whom are under the age of 35 and hungry for content, Abu Alsamh says it’s an extraordinary time to be a filmmaker in the country.“People are eager to be part of this prosperous industry,” she says. “There are parts of the country that even I, as a local, don’t know much about.

So, every time I get scripts in from different areas of Saudi, I get very excited because it’s such a first step and everything is new.

We have so many stories to cover that haven’t been represented to us yet.”Abu Alsamh was instrumental in facilitating the two biggest Hollywood productions to shoot in the country: the $140 million actioner Desert Warrior, with Anthony Mackie and Aiysha Hart, that shot in the country’s Neom region, and Kandahar with Gerald Butler that was shot around AlUla.“It was so important to have these productions here because it laid out the ground rules for other productions to come,” she says, noting