How Saudi Arabia's entertainment investments are playing out at home and abroad : NPR

NPR's Scott Detrow spoke with Scott Roxborough of The Hollywood Reporter about the growing footprint of Saudi investment in global entertainment, and how those investments are playing out in deals at home and abroad. Several Persian Gulf wealth funds, including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), have pledged a total of $24 billion for Paramount's attempted takeover tied to the potential Paramount Skydance/Warner Bros. Discovery transactions, a move that critics and insiders say mixes commercial aims with geopolitics and influence-seeking.

"Powerful parties want the Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery merger to succeed. And no, we're not talking about President Trump or the Ellison family," Detrow said on All Things Considered, noting the $24 billion pledge. Roxborough told NPR that the Saudi investments are part of a broader strategy to build relationships with influential U.S. figures and institutions.

Roxborough framed the investments as pursuing three overlapping goals set out by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman: "this sort of soft power investment," reducing Saudi Arabia's dependence on oil and gas revenues, and "to really open up the country inside to sort of liberalize its cultural offerings." He warned, however, that those aims face limits given market realities and political pushback.

Key details

• Committed capital: $24 billion from Persian Gulf wealth funds, including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
• Targets and assets at stake: Paramount's attempted takeover and a deal that would touch CNN, HBO and a film catalog with rights to Batman, Superman and Harry Potter.
• Structural limits: Roxborough noted the PIF stake "does not give them a controlling stake of Warner Bros on paper" — "they're not going to have seats on the board. They're not going to have any official control."

Despite the lack of formal control, Roxborough cautioned that "these type of investments usually do come with some form of subtle coercion." He compared the dynamic to more than a decade of Chinese investment in Hollywood, which he said coincided with a shift in on-screen portrayals: "we started to see a move away from Hollywood portrayals of the Chinese as being the baddies and a more sort of positive image."

The reporting also flagged a possible retrenchment in some corners of Saudi spending. Roxborough referenced a Financial Times report — which NPR had not independently confirmed — that the kingdom might be pulling back from investments such as LIV Golf. He argued that oil-price pressures and lower-than-expected returns have constrained the appetite for big-ticket cultural bets.

Outlook

On the question of success, Roxborough offered a mixed assessment. He said the economic diversification effort "hasn't been that successful" so far, and that international perceptions of Saudi Arabia still tend to center on "human rights abuses and with the problematic treatment of women in particular." But he added: "I think what has been incredibly successful is the internal transformation. People are out on the streets. There are things happening at night. There are movies that you can go to. There are concerts in the desert. There are these huge sporting events."

That dual reality — visible domestic cultural change alongside persistent global skepticism and the specter of influence-seeking tied to high-profile media assets — will shape how Washington and Hollywood calibrate their responses as the deals move forward.