Media mogul

Edward Borgerding landed in his current role as CEO of Abu Dhabi Media Company via a high-flying career with Disney and stint as a full-time dad. Kat Slowe meets a family man with an emotional attachment to film.

My doctor says: "Have orange juice and shisha in the morning and you'll be great." So states Edward Borgerding - but if anyone needs to remember his breakfast it's the man described by the media as the ‘ex-Disney overlord'.

As Disney's head of international sales, Borgerding needed a good night's sleep and morning pick-me-up to prepare him for another hectic day - it's a ritual that still serves him well in his latest role.

Borgerding joined Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC) in March, making him responsible for a group with several assets. His remit covers two daily newspapers, several magazines, three television channels, four radio stations, a printing company and a distribution operation.

But the recent launch of imagenation, an Abu Dhabi-based film company, seems to be his biggest challenge. "It's called imagenation [pronounced image nation]," Borgerding stresses. "Some bright guy in the office came up with it."

Launching a film company in the Middle East has raised some eyebrows among industry players. But Borgerding insists that the UAE capital, which recently staged the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, is an ideal location for the venture - before admitting he needs time to develop the company.

"In the US, [the movie industry] is planned and predictable," he says. "You can go to a bank and say, ‘I am going to make 10 movies, will you lend me money?'. And they will lend you money because they know if you make the movie for this price, this is the cost of marketing, this is where it's going to go and this is what's going to happen."

Establishing a similar framework in the Middle East will not happen overnight, according to Borgerding. But he believes Abu Dhabi could potentially become a recognised base for film-industry executives and movie stars. Whether he's right remains to be seen, but should Borgerding's vision become reality, a thriving Middle Eastern film industry will "generate more money for us", he says.

Laying the foundations is the first objective, with Borgerding and his team already on the case. Indeed, the company has recently launched Film Arabia, an imagenation subsidiary set up to produce local films.

Projects such as One Thousand and One Nights and Ali Baba have been mooted, although Borgerding refuses to confirm anything while smiling mischievously. He does, however, say that the company wants to develop Middle Eastern stories for Western audiences.

"The Arab culture is rich, deep and profound," Bordering proclaims. "I am excited about the potential to find a lot of fantastic stories and adventures in one of the most exciting places in the world, and tell them so they can cross over to the West."

With just five million people in the UAE - less than half the population of Los Angeles - the local region constitutes a tiny fraction of the global movie industry. Yet imagenation is planning to make several Hollywood films, of which one or two will be created in the Middle East.

"The home run for me is to take a story here and to make it in Hollywood and have it be a global success," Borgerding fervently states, adding, "because if it's a global success, it will also be a success in the Middle East.

"They will be adventure-drama films," he clarifies.

His ambition doesn't stop there. "We are also going to make films in India and China if we are lucky enough," he says. "We want to participate in those film industries that are building; we want to participate in world cinema. You create content that has global potential. The market in the Middle East is only a subset of that potential - there are no cinemas in Saudi Arabia, for example."

According to Borgerding, imagenation's management plans to make eight films a year, ranging from US$10million to US$50million, with Hollywood partners. When explaining the strategy, he says: "The idea in making movies is to make them for less, not more. The drill in financing movies is to use as little equity as you can to achieve the vision you have. You can still make a US$100million movie without putting up US$100million worth of equity."

With a hint of pride in his voice, Borgerding says the company is already receiving hundreds of scripts and proposals. He adds that imagenation is "well down the road" to developing Hollywood-type movies.

However, he warns that developing and making movies with the right directors and actors takes time. "It's a hard thing to do," he says. "Because once you say, ‘I'm going to spend US$10million, US$200million or US$1million', you want to be ready; once filming starts, that's it. You're going to spend all your money and if the movies are not good then you will lose all your cash."

Unsurprisingly, Borgerding admits one of his primary objectives for imagenation is to make money. He adds that failure to do so will undermine plans to establish a sustainable Middle Eastern film industry. "The profitability of the company is a prerequisite of anything else that happens," he asserts. "With film companies you need to manage the risk. Each film is like launching a brand new business. You don't know how successful it's going to be.

Borgerding reveals that he has received calls from well-known US talent agents, keen to discuss possible collaboration on future projects. The interest comes as no surprise.

"If you have the ability to finance a movie, people will want to talk to you because there aren't many in Hollywood who have the ability to green-light movies," he says "If you do, people want to work with you - which means leading agencies and the world's top talent will probably work with us."

The coming months will shed further light on whether or not Hollywood's ‘top talent' signs up to work with imagenation. Either way, Borgerding and his colleagues are keen to ensure all movies observe local cultural and religious sensitivities. The middle-aged executive says 99% of films are made to entertain and not insult audiences.

"There are lots of movies that get released in the Middle East that have violence in them," he says. "I am not sure about nudity, but I don't think we will be making a lot of movies that will require censorship here."

If all goes to plan, Borgerding may be considered a pioneer of the Middle Eastern film industry. Such acclaim would turn most heads, but the mild American insists he won't get carried away. "I don't have any particular insight into the business," he says. "It is extremely difficult to connect to an audience. There are so many movies that are brilliant but the audience just doesn't connect with them. I think [movie producer] Samuel Goldwyn said: ‘Nobody knows nothin'.' That is probably true about the film industry."

It is possible that Borgerding's sense of proportion comes partially from his background. Life wasn't always about wheeling and dealing for him. He rose from relatively humble beginnings to his present position with few, himself included, expecting him to climb to such heights.

Though born in California, Borgerding grew up in Ohio, the son of a man who worked in the tyre industry. As a self-confessed adventurous type, it wasn't until Borgerding returned to Los Angeles that he discovered his love of film.

READERS' COMMENTS

MORE FROM ARABIANBUSINESS.COM