RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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First, it bought golf , then Electronic Arts , and now Saudi Arabia is paying $7 billion to build a Dragon Ball Z theme park in France. It will be the second one in the world, with construction on the first already underway in Qiddiya City. Emmanuel Macron is ecstatic about the deal. "You know my passion for manga," he wrote on X . "You also know my determination to attract to France the investments that create jobs and make the most ambitious projects possible."
The plan was announced right after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit to the French capital today. Why, you might ask? "The idea was born after French President Emmanuel Macron and the Saudi crown prince discovered a shared enthusiasm for Dragon Ball Z during Macron’s visit to Saudi Arabia in 2025," reports Reuters . The journalist-dismembering prince is just like us!
A Dragon Ball theme park is in the works in France. Developed in partnership with Qiddiya, which is set to open a similar park in Riyadh. https://t.co/oI94QSdOEV pic.twitter.com/Tk2CpyAPNX
It will be one of three theme parks in Cergy-Pontoise, just northwest of Paris. Macron is touting the deal as a project that will create 22,000 jobs. Construction will take several years, however, and there's no set date for the parks to open. "Nothing like this has been seen since Disneyland Paris," he tweeted. "A new global destination. Here, in France."
It's the latest example of Saudi Arabia leveraging its sovereign wealth fund to insert itself on the global cultural stage. The country has been buying relevance in the worlds of sports, entertainment, video games, and now anime as it seeks to distract from its human rights abuses and autocratic regime.
A bunch of comedians, including Dave Chappelle, were called out last year for taking big sacks of money from the Crown Prince in return for performing in Riyadh . More recently, Saudi Arabia closed the biggest leveraged buyout in history and took EA, maker of Battlefield and Madden , private. Many developers at the company are now bracing for mass layoffs .
"Thank you to Qiddiya and Saudi Arabia for their trust in our country, in our talents, and in our future," Macron continued. "This is the very essence of Choose France: to seek out the most ambitious projects and make France the country where they become reality. To create jobs. To make France shine. We’re not done surprising the world. Very proud of this achievement."
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