AMC exits Saudi Arabia as young cinema market booms

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — AMC Entertainment Holdings, the world’s biggest cinema chain, has decided to exit Saudi Arabia’s fast-growing market in the face of intense competition. The decision, announced Tuesday, comes less than five years after AMC opened the kingdom’s first movie theater following a decades-long ban. Saudi Arabia lifted the ban on movie theaters and other forms of public entertainment as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s efforts to overhaul the economy and bring Western-style entertainment to the once-cloistered and ultra-conservative kingdom. AMC marked its arrival by hosting a viewing of “Black Panther” in April 2018 that attracted a large crowd of men and women, a scene that would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier.