“As the industry regulator, the General Commission for Audiovisual Media has started the process for licensing cinemas in the Kingdom,” Minister of Culture and Information Awwad Alawwad said in a statement.
“We expect the first cinemas to open in March 2018.”
NAN reports that public cinemas in the country have been illegal since the 1980s, but a plan to reintroduce them has been mooted by the head of the General Authority for Entertainment, Amr al-Madani, as part of the government’s Vision 2030 slate of cultural and economic reforms.
The grand mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh added:
“I hope those in charge of the entertainment authority are guided to turn it from bad to good and not to open doors to evil.”