RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s animation industry is doing well at the box office but missing the point, according to Dr. Mohammed Ghazala, professor of animation and head of the School of Cinematic Arts at Effat University.
He argues the real money lies in owning characters and stories that pay out for decades, rather than just for a season.
Animated films pulled in roughly 13.8 percent of Saudi box office revenue in 2024, the most recent year with full data — SR116.4 million ($31 million) out of a total market worth SR845.6 million that year.
Speaking to Al-Eqtisadiah, Ghazala said the economic value of animation did not stop at the cinema but extended into video games, visual effects, digital platforms, licensed merchandise, educational content and entertainment experiences.
This is not kids’ business
The opportunity reaches well beyond children's content, Ghazala argues, as animation techniques underpin filmmaking, gaming, visual effects and advertising.
The box office is stage one, he said, while everything that follows — broadcast rights, licensing, games, books, apparel, consumer goods, educational content, theme parks — is where the value accumulates.
Successful intellectual property “can generate recurring income for years,” he added, making investment in characters and stories more sustainable than reliance on ticket revenue alone.
The family multiplier
Cinemas do well out of animation because they bring in whole families, not single viewers. Nor does spending end there; families buy food and drink and tend to shop while they are out, which pushes the takings per visit above that which a film aimed at a single age group can manage.
Animated titles also stay in cinemas longer, picking up weekends, school holidays and seasonal traffic instead of depending on a strong opening week.
What $147 billion looks like
Animation does not sell a film, Ghazala said. It creates an asset that extends across dozens of products.
Pokemon alone has generated more than $100 billion in cumulative revenue, by his figures, with some newer estimates reaching north of $147 billion. Most of it did not come films but from games, cards and other licensed products. Mickey Mouse, Star Wars and the Disney princesses have each cleared tens of billions of dollars on similar terms. The pattern, he argued, is consistent: The value sits with whoever owns the characters and the trademarks.
Super Mario Bros. has also shown how it works, taking $1.36 billion at the box office and lifting sales across Nintendo’s games and product lines.
The takeaway, Ghazala said, is not to chase a hit for one season. It is to build a character that can survive across cinema, television, gaming, merchandise and physical entertainment.
The technology beneath the blockbusters
Animation stopped being a genre some time ago. It is now the technology underneath much of modern cinema, particularly large-scale productions built on visual effects.
“Avatar,” which took upwards of $2.9 billion at the box office, is essentially a 3D animation. “Avatar: The Way of Water” added more than $2.3 billion. And the Chinese animated feature “Ne Zha 2” has cleared $2.2 billion, muscling its way into the all-time top ranks.
Investing in animation, Ghazala argues, is not just investing in cartoons. It is investing in a technical capability that plugs into cinema, gaming, advertising and every digital experience.
What a Saudi industry actually needs
Building a competitive Saudi industry, he said, means moving past standalone projects and toward an ecosystem that runs year-round.
That starts with education. Formal animation programs remain thin on the ground, currently concentrated in a handful of universities — Effat University, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University and Dar Al-Hekma University among them.
It continues with local studios geared for continuous production, financing structures that match animation’s three-to-five-year production cycles, and international partnerships that transfer technology and know-how to Saudi talent.
But the load-bearing pillar, Ghazala said, is Saudi intellectual property. Executing production work for foreign companies creates jobs but leaves the long-tail revenue in the hands of whoever owns the character.
It is the difference, he said, between a country that runs the workshops and a country that owns the brands and exports them — the model on which the US and Japan built their industries.
Characters that outlive their films
An animated film will not necessarily out-earn a live-action release at the box office. Where it wins is on lifetime return.
The commercial cycle of a traditional film typically thins out after cinema and streaming. A successful animated character keeps working for 20 or 30 years, carrying itself from film to series, from series to game, from game to consumer products, educational content and theme-park attractions.
Domestically, Ghazala pointed to “Masameer” and the film “The Journey” as early proof that Saudi characters can travel. The next stretch is harder — turning those characters into brands with the durability to survive and the reach to leave the Kingdom.
Real investment in Saudi animation, he concluded, is not in making a film. It is in “owning a Saudi character that audiences love.”
This article was originally published in Al-Eqtisadiah.
