Dubai
There is no doubt as to what UAE’s audiences want when they hit the multiplexes — 58 per cent spent on watching action/adventure movies as they spent an estimated $157.8 million (Dh579 million) across all non-Arabic film genres based on 2014 box-office receipts. They spent a further $4 million on Arabic language films that year.
In 2015, the grand total spent on all-language cinema swelled to $189 million as the UAE saw more screens getting added.
“While Egyptian films claimed nearly all box-office revenues among Arabic-language films in Egypt and UAE since 2012, Lebanese films have made nearly two-thirds of box office revenues in their own country over the same period,” according to a report brought out by Northwestern University in Qatar, in partnership with the Doha Film Institute.
“In two of the biggest cinema markets — Lebanon and Egypt — Arabic-language films earned more at the box office per title than non-Arabic films. This is despite Arabic-language films claiming only a fraction of box-office revenues overall throughout the region.”
