Secret Cinema Founder Fabien Riggall on Venturing Into Saudi Arabia With Immersive Experience at AlUla (EXCLUSIVE)

Nick Vivarelli

24 January 2025 at 8:07 am·3-min read

Secret Cinema founder Fabien Riggall is venturing into the Middle East, starting with Saudi Arabia where he has set up a lavish show titled “Azira: The Immersive Experience.”

The piece is commissioned by the Royal Commission for AlUla, the swathe of northwest Saudi comprising a lush oasis and vast sandstone canyons.

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Following the 2022 sale of Secret Cinema, which produced more than 60 large-scale immersive productions — including ones inspired by “Blade Runner,” “Star Wars” and “Stranger Things,” in which audiences were encouraged to dress up like the characters from the movies or shows — Riggall is now operating a new company called LOST.

LOST is the outfit that produced “Azira,” a 90-minute immersive theater experience that combines an original soundtrack, an original story and a group of modern dance performers and actors. The narrative is centered around a female action hero, the daughter of an archeologist who is seeking the secrets of a dark ancient city that is under the sands of AlUla.

“She follows in her father’s footsteps to discover this whole new world,” noted Riggall, who sees this Saudi origins piece as a stepping stone for bigger ambitions in the Middle East.

“My interest is developing a studio that will work within the region to develop stories from there with young talent, and to essentially develop new formats for films,” said Riggall. His longstanding rapport with Saudi started when he attended a culture conference in Ryadh in 2016, one year before the kingdom lifted its religion-related ban on cinema.

Describing the new direction he is taking, Riggall said that “essentially, it starts with an IP and a story, but what interests me is creating something that could have multiple angles in thinking about what an origin story looks like in that region.”

He added: “It could be an immersive theater show, an album, a game, a film, a TV series.”

Since Secret Cinema was sold in 2022 for a reported more than $100 million to U.S. company TodayTix Group, Riggall has dabbled in distribution, setting up some special event screenings of Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables” in the U.K. He’s also taken part in staging an immersive fundraising “Night for Ukraine” event in London and produced and directed an immersive music video for Muse’s song “Verona.”

Riggall has now set his sights on setting up a studio, that he called the successor to Secret Cinema, “which will be the next form of immersive entertainment across music, visual arts, gaming.” In addition to licensing IP, the new venture “is very much about creating IP and putting it into new stories and new shows,” he added.

To this end, Riggall, who is based in London, will soon be returning to Saudi and going to Riyadh to meet with “multiple potential partners.” But he is also already active in the UAE and Qatar. “I’ve been talking to Qatar about lots of sites where they want to do experiences,” he said, noting that “there’s just a hunger for new ideas there.”

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