Morocco Bets on Hollywood With $25 Million Film Hub in ‘Gladiator 2’ Location Ouarzazate
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- Morocco's Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication broke ground on the International Cinema City in Ouarzazate on June 27, investing 240 million Moroccan Dirhams (~$25 million) in a 24-acre site at the city's main entrance with direct access to National Road 9 and Mohammed V Avenue
- The new complex is designed as a one-stop shop spanning the full production value chain — sound stages, post-production labs, editing and screening rooms, outdoor shooting space, a training and talent incubation hub, a hotel, and a dedicated space for immersive technologies and AI applied to filmmaking
- Morocco is pushing beyond its location-shoot reputation, offering foreign productions a 30% rebate, VAT tax exemption, and up to 80% equipment rental discount, with foreign investment in Morocco-shot productions reaching roughly $130 million in 2025
- Ouarzazate, situated between the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara, has already hosted 'Gladiator 2,' 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,' 'Game of Thrones,' and Martin Scorsese's 'The Last Temptation of Christ,' with recent shoots including a 'Lord of War' sequel starring Nicolas Cage and French epic 'De Gaulle: Résistance'
- The training hub is positioned as central to the project's strategy, aimed at upskilling local crews in post-production and visual effects to reduce Morocco's reliance on imported talent
- The studio push comes amid accelerating runaway production from the U.S. driven by lower costs and more generous tax incentives abroad, a shift Morocco is explicitly trying to capture with end-to-end services rather than just scenery
Why it matters: Morocco is spending $25 million to convert Ouarzazate from a backdrop-for-hire into a self-contained production base, betting that the same runaway-production trend hollowing out U.S. below-the-line work will now fill soundstages between the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara — with a 30% rebate and a training pipeline targeting VFX and post-production jobs that have traditionally gone to Los Angeles and London crews.
