Hollywood is starting to open its arms to money from oil-rich Gulf countries, who are looking to invest bns in the entertainment industry, Lucas Shaw writes in Bloomberg. Film production companies had previously distanced themselves from Saudi Arabia, but resistance to funds from the kingdom is fading as traditional film financing sources such as Europe and the United States dry up, Shaw writes. Gulf nations, on the other hand, are flush with money, prompting financiers to question the logic of denying their funds. Studios can now receive financial incentives to film in Saudi, and dozens of celebrities flew to Riyadh in December for the Red Sea International Film Festival.

It’s not just Saudi; Qatar and the UAE have long been sources of funding for the media industry, Shaw points out. The Qatari sovereign wealth fund previously invested in the movie studio Miramax, and Mubadala, which is part of the government of the United Arab Emirates, has put a lot of money into Michael Jackson's music catalog. Remarkably, Egypt — once known as the “Hollywood of the Middle East” — is not mentioned in the report.

Some producers are drawing parallels between China a decade ago and the Middle East today, according to the Bloomberg report. China became the second-most-important film market in the world after Hollywood. Looking to develop its homegrown film industry and to extend its influence on the global stage, China pumped bns of dollars into their film industry to draw in US media companies. Once Hollywood was in, China kicked them out, keeping its practices. Chinese films have now surpassed American films at the top of the Chinese box office. Producers say that Saudi Arabia, like China, wants to use media and entertainment to gain more influence in the world and improve its reputation. The Saudi appetite for international films is expected to outnumber their desire for domestic films.

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A shadow fleet of oil tankers from Russia? Moscow spent some USD 2.2 bn on proxy buyers to build up its shadow oil and fuel tanker fleet, according to a Bloomberg report. This led to a shortage of tankers on the market, which drove up freight prices for Russia's competitors. The goal is to get around the EU sanctions on Russian energy products by buying and using oil and fuel tankers that are hard to connect to Moscow. The business information news outlet says that the Russians are thought to own about 10–12% of the world's tanker fleet. In response to Western sanctions on its energy exports, Moscow decided at the beginning of this month to slash its oil output by 5%, or 500,000 barrels a day.