"Desert Warrior would be the first Hollywood-style tentpole movie shot entirely on location in Saudi Arabia under its de facto supreme ruler Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030, a.k.a. the culture-washing governmental push intended to liberate Saudi society from its 'addiction' to oil through soft-power alternatives like tourism and entertainment."
"With construction still not nearly complete on the studio's 130,000 square feet of promised production space, the Desert Warrior team was forced to improvise. To house the cavernous throne room for Sir Ben Kingsley's power-hungry Emperor Kisra, the crew built a massive ad hoc soundstage in the parking lot of the Grand Millennium Hotel in Tabuk."
"It was like an inflatable stadium; it was this amazing thing. There were no studios. There were studios after us because of the film."
Desert Warrior is set to be the first Hollywood-style film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, aligning with Vision 2030. Directed by Rupert Wyatt and starring Anthony Mackie, it is the inaugural project at Neom Media. However, production faced significant challenges as the studio was not ready, forcing the crew to improvise. They built a massive soundstage in a hotel parking lot to accommodate scenes. The production encountered various obstacles, including missing infrastructure and regional instability, impacting the filming process.
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