Film director James Cameron is set to open next week's Abu Dhabi Media Summit, which will see a number of big-name executives descend on the UAE capital.
The director behind Avatar and Titanic, the two largest-grossing films of all time with combined box-office revenues of $4.6 billion, will take part in a keynote conversation with James Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corporation in Europe and Asia.
Other attendees at the event, which runs from March 15 to 17, include Facebook investor Yuri Milner, Carlos Saldanha, director of Ice Age, and Jim Gianopulos, chief executive of Fox Filmed Entertainment.
The summit is hosted by the Abu Dhabi Media Company, which also owns and publishes The National.
A key theme of the event is the demand for quality content in the media industry, said H.E. Saeed Al-Hajeri, a board member at ADMC and chairman of the company's executive committee.
"We wanted to concentrate our dialogue around the very thing that drives people to buy and invest in these latest platforms: great content," Mr Al-Hajeri said in a statement. "It must be a number one priority for the media industry to ensure that as much energy and investment goes into nurturing creative talent as it does technology. That is the only way the media industry can be sustainable."
Co-chairs of the event include Tom Glocer chief executive of Thomson Reuters and Jean-Bernard Lévy, chairman of the management board at Vivendi.
bflanagan@thenational.ae