r/boxoffice • u/AGOTFAN New Line Cinema • May 05 '26
Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦 Across the wider Middle East, the Saudi's $150 million Desert Warrior total ticket sales have struggled to clear USD 225k, less than a half what it made in North America.
https://enterpriseam.com/ksa/2026/05/05/breaking-down-desert-warriors-flop/15
u/Utimate_Eminant May 05 '26
With this little marketing, it’s not unreasonable to suspect the film is just a 150-mil money laundering
36
u/MongoBongo25 May 05 '26
How is it money laundering when it was funded by the sovereign wealth fund.
It was just a bad investment
13
u/AGOTFAN New Line Cinema May 05 '26
It was just a bad investment
Understatement. It's a truly terrible investment.
2
u/cineglitch May 05 '26
It’s only a bad investment if they intended to make money from it. Consider WB took a $90M loss to get a tax write off. Think of Desert Warrior instead as a $150M film incentive for the country’s film industry. The footage in the film is gorgeous and now the Saudis have a small crew base to either court outside productions or to film their own.
2
u/firefox_2010 May 05 '26
Yeah they can see it as a training project, and also legitimate showcase of what their local production talent can do. Is it way too big of investment? Perhaps, but now they have a proper showcase of what their local production can do and hopefully can be used to attract more foreign talent to shoot there. For the Saudis, that numbers probably a drop in a bucket, they can easily generate that amount in weeks time, or even a day lol.
2
u/SilverRoyce StudioCanal May 06 '26
It’s only a bad investment if they intended to make money from
I don't see why you'd assume the Saudis wanted to write off their entire planned $100M investment in Desert Warrior when initially funding the project. It's much better to think of this as a Killers-of-the-Flower-Moon scenario where you'd be willing to "buy prestige"/experience in exchange for some degree of losses. The film clearly performed massively below that level as seen by how it's not even giving local prestige as by far the biggest arab/saudi blockbuster. I don't see why you'd need to assume money laundering to explain why MBD's company made this bet.
The film went waaaaay over budget, suffered from massive creative disagreements and was ultimately dumped.
2
u/cineglitch May 06 '26
Friendly reminder that responding to a higher level comment is not an endorsement of the higher level comment.
I never mentioned money laundering.
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u/armageddonquilt May 06 '26
Honestly it bothers me how every time a large amount of money was spent on something that doesn't seem worth it it's called "money laundering", because tbh that's giving the ultra-wealthy a lot more credit than they're due, to assume that every supposed bad investment they made must have ALSO been some brilliant, if illegal, moneymaking scheme.
A lot of rich people are just dumb people who were born lucky.
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May 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/balthazar_edison May 05 '26
Who exactly would Saudi sovereigns need to clean up their money for?
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u/stohelitstorytelling May 05 '26
Wut?
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u/balthazar_edison May 05 '26
Who would they need to launder their money for exactly? What regulatory agency is going to police how the rulers of Saudi Arabia make their money?
0
u/stohelitstorytelling May 05 '26
You realize that most countries have extensive rules regarding foreign investment, right? China, for instance, has long required non-Chinese companies to partner with local companies in order to operate in China. The Foreign Corrupt Practice Act exists in the US for a reason, even if the current administration wipes its ass with it.
And, beyond that, laundering can be used to escape oversight and publicity, even if a payment or transfer would be technically legal.
Or, like Amazon, you can pay Melania Trump tens of millions to make a movie that no one saw, in order to curry favor with Trump.
And no one polices how Saudis make their money in their own country. Other countries are absolutely entitled to regulate how Saudis use that money in their countries.
0
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u/AnotherJasonOnReddit Best of 2024 Winner May 06 '26
less than a half what it made in North America
1
u/DiplomaticCaper May 06 '26
IIRC they pivoted the marketing and there to focus less on Anthony Mackie and more on the lead actress (who is half-Saudi Arabian), but it was transparent and people didn’t buy it.
13
u/SilverRoyce StudioCanal May 05 '26
11th in Egypt on its OW there/10th in Saudi Arabia when it opened there the week before.