Mirage Holdings, a spin off of the US’s Nickelson Entertainment Group (NEG), has been licensed to operate in Ras al-Khaimah Media City (RAK Media City) and will set up one of the largest film and post-production centres in the world.
The Ras al-Khaimah Investment Authority, charged with encouraging investments in the emirate and executors of RAK Media City, told OBG that the deal had been signed with the American company in late May.
On June 10, RAK Media City announced that Mirage Holdings will invest $1bn into the creation of Mirage Studios, which will be located on 2m sq metres close to Emirates Road, the inter-emirate highway that connects to Dubai.
“The Mirage Holdings FZCO has been licensed to operate the entire film and media city as a UAE Free Zone…to our knowledge, we are the first foreign, private company to be granted permission to operate a full free zone of such large dimensions,” said Michelle Nickelson, CEO of Mirage Holdings in a press release from RAK Media City.
The newly formed Mirage employs some of Hollywood’s best special effects professionals, including those that worked on the Oscar winning “What Dreams May Come” (1998) and the “Matrix” (1999) produced by Manex Entertainment. Michelle Nickelson’s father, Carl Nickelson, who had been involved in the financing and launch of Manex, created Nickelson Entertainment Group (NEG) with his daughter and is now part of Mirage Holdings.
“With Manex, there was a brilliant design team; the problem was with the management. With Mirage, we have members of the same team on board, but the management structure is totally different,” said Michelle Nickelson in the press release.
Last year NEG announced that they would be making up to four films in the UAE. They recruited such names as Roger Moore and Robert Downey Jr. to star in movies, which had plans to be partially shot in Abu Dhabi.
Indications in 2005 were that NEG was eager to invest in a larger-scale operation in the country – geared to more comprehensive film production – rather than just the occasional backdrop for scenes. It appears that lower costs tipped the scales to setting up outside the US.
“The biggest cost is not the stars, it is the effects,” Nickelson added. “By being able to fabricate visual effects in RAK using top designers in the US, everyone wins.”
The venture by Mirage Holding is the second plot of land leased by RAK Media City, a media free zone formally created by decree in January 2006 by the government of Ras al-Khaimah.
At the beginning of the year, Century Media Networks Incorporated, a South Asian group, leased the first 20,000 sq metre plot to be involved in television production and satellite up linking.
The third component is a 187,000 sq metre piece of land that is not yet leased, although RAK Investment Authority has said that “they are in the middle of negotiations with potential clients”.
Representatives of RAK Media City have explained that further expansion is possible once the existing zones are rented.
Of course, Ras al-Khaimah is not the only emirate with ambitions to nurture their media industry. Dubai has been the pioneer in the Gulf – and the region – since it created Dubai Media City, the Middle East’s first media free zone, in 2000 and succeeded in attracting international brands to their tax-free, censorship free, island of business.
Six years on, Dubai Media City has mainly thrived on attracting large multinationals, like CNBC, BBC and Reuters, to set up regional headquarter offices. It has also cultivated large numbers of start-up magazines, design firms and media service operations. It has not, however, to date been able to woo the big name production studios.
That perhaps will change when the International Media Production Zone (IMPZ), which will focus on printing, logistics and warehousing of media material, and Dubai Studio City, which will be for television and film production, are completed. These operations, according to the organisers of the free zones, are too expensive to be carried out in the centrally located Dubai Media City.
This is driving more area-intensive industries further out of the city and into the deserts, where costs of labour and land are less expensive and space is at less of a premium.
For these criteria, Ras al-Khaimah is well-suited to play a prominent role. Not only does it have lower costs than other places in the UAE, it also boasts a history of successful industrial enterprises. Starting with cement companies in the 1970s, Ras al-Khaimah has succeeded in developing world class ceramics, pharmaceutical, glass and technology companies. Many of these are some of the largest companies in their respective industries in the Middle East.
Still, those in Ras al-Khaimah insist that they are not in competition with Dubai; rather they are aiming to complement their southern sister.
The emirate’s mountain ranges and abundance of untouched land make it a “unique product” and will attract a certain kind of movie production team -different than an operation which would choose Dubai and Studio City. “We see Dubai and Ras al-Khaimah becoming a cluster,” said an official at the RAK Investment Authority. “We are in the middle of the world – right between Hollywood and Bollywood. We will continue to make [the UAE] a focal point.”
