Abu Dhabi sets up $1bn movie company

MOVIE MAGIC: Abu Dhabi Media Company is poised to announce partnerships with Hollywood to make feature film. (Getty Images)

First it was football and now it's the movies as Abu Dhabi begins to make a huge impact on the world stage.

Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC) has formed a film financing subsidiary that plans to spend more than $1bn developing, financing and producing as many as 40 movies over the next five years, it has been announced.

And the first partnership with Hollywood will be revealed in a matter of weeks, company chiefs say.

The company, called imagenation abu dhabi, will form joint ventures with Hollywood and other international producers to create globally distributed movies and digital content, UAE daily The National reported on Wednesday.

The announcement comes just days after the Abu Dhabi United Group for Development and Investment bought Premier League football club Manchester City in a deal that made headlines worldwide.

ADMC will also work with Middle Eastern film-makers to produce Arabic language and dual-language films with crossover appeal.

“The idea behind imagenation is to create a relationship with the filmmaking community so we can develop the skills in Abu Dhabi to grow an industry,” said Edward Borgerding, the chief executive of ADMC told the paper.

Mohamed Khalaf al Mazrouei, the chairman of both imagenation and ADMC, said establishing a strong global media company was a component of the emirate’s investment strategy.

The company has already set up offices within ADMC and hired Stefan Brunner, a German who recently helped co-produce animated series for Marvel Entertainment, as its chief financial officer.

Imagenation’s first film project will be announced before the end of the year.

The venture represents the second wave of Hollywood alliances forged by the Government-owned ADMC.

The first was the multi-billion dollar deal signed last autumn with Warner Brothers and Aldar Properties to build a theme park, hotel complex and chain of movie theatres.

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