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ABSTRACT
This article proposes to look away from highly publicized markets for Hollywood such as China toward a lesser-known area: the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). After presenting the economic and cultural strategies developed by the Hollywood majors over the past century, the article explores the current characteristics of the MENA market and the way these strategies are applied and adapted, faced with geopolitical constraints and the prevalence of piracy. The difference between strategies in the two regions are notably brought to light.
The entire Arab world is perhaps the planet's biggest untapped entertainment market, with a population of roughly 300 million, two-thirds of whom are under the age of 30. Since all speak the same language, albeit with different dialects and different cultural sensibilities, the region should be on a par with Western Europe or Japan in terms of box office revenues.1
IN 2011 TOM CRUISE MADE HEADLINES FOR HIS ACROBATIC FEAT DANGLING OFF THE FACADE OF THE Burj tower in Dubai. Although the tower features in only a few scenes of Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol, it loomed large in the visual identity of the film. Beyond the spectacular, this feat is also indicative of the interest Hollywood is now giving the Emirati region and market. Since Hollywood became the dominant film exporter around the world after World War I, the majors have ceaselessly concentrated on opening new markets.2 In the process, they have finetuned their exporting strategies, developing a collection of tools adapted to each type of market. A small but significant academic literature exists on the early export relationship with Canada (Jarvie), Europe (Trumpbour, Ulf-Møller), Latin America (De Usabel), and the MPEA (Seagrave).3 More recently, the political economy approach of Thomas Guback's The International Film Industry: Western Europe and America since 1945 (1969) was applied to a study of the Hollywood majors' export strategies around the world since the 1960s in Mingant's Hollywood à la conquête du monde (2010).4 In the late 1980s, the markets to open were eastern Europe and South Korea. Today the new frontiers are China and India. In this article I have chosen, however, to move away from the spotlight and to concentrate on a more minor market, the Middle East / North Africa...