Saudi Arabia to allow cinemas from early 2018

First cinemas to open in March 2018

Saudi Arabia said on Monday that public cinemas would be allowed in the Kingdom and the first cinemas were likely to open early next year.

"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 bin Saleh Alawwad said in a statement.

"We expect the first cinemas to open in March 2018."

In late October 2017, a rare movie night was held in Riyadh as a precursor to an expected formal lifting of the Kingdom's ban on cinemas.

Following a decree allowing women to drive, authorities have hinted cinemas would soon be permitted as part of ambitious reforms for a post-oil era that could shake up the Kingdom's cultural scene.

"Cinema is like the soul of Saudi society," Faisal Alharbi, director of "National Dialogue", one of three short films screened to an audience packed into the capital's King Fahd Cultural Centre had said. 

"It makes people see reality, a reflection of their own lives on screen."