Saudi Arabia to End 35-Year Cinema Ban by Screening Black Panther
Photos by Bob Levey/Getty, Dave Kotinsky/Getty
Marvel’s record-breaking superhero movie Black Panther is breaking more new ground by becoming the first film to screen at Saudi Arabian cinemas in 35 years.
The movie will be shown at the country’s first-ever AMC movie theatre on April 18. The 620-seat movie theatre, a converted symphony hall in the King Abdullah Financial District, is opening just four months after the country lifted the ban last December. It’s reported to be one of as many as 100 theaters set to open by the year 2030.
Black Panther will play for five days before giving way to Marvel’s forthcoming movie Avengers: Infinity War, set to release everywhere on April 26.
As the Washington Post explains, movie theaters were common in Saudi Arabia for a good portion of the 20th century, with the first cinemas opening up in the Middle Eastern country by Western expatriates in the 1930s. In the 1980s, however, the country’s increasingly conservative atmosphere resulted in a ban of the Western practice, seen at the time (and, to some extent, still seen) as immoral.