In the lounge, Saleh revealed his identity. Ryan and the others had already prepared for this moment, and they put on just the right amount of surprise followed by genuine-looking relief.
It all felt natural.
Saleh got straight to it. "Ryan, have you never thought about looking for investment in the Arab world?"
Ryan played up the surprise. "Are you representing the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority?" He looked at Saleh. "Are you saying you'd invest in the film?"
Saleh shook his head quickly. "No, no, the amount is too large. I don't have that kind of authority. But I can refer you to Abu Dhabi directly, under the Investment Authority's name."
"Really?" Ryan watched him nod, then said, "That would solve my biggest problem. I can't thank you enough."
Saleh smiled and waved it off. "Don't mention it. Your film speaks up for Arabs."
"I mean it," Ryan said, and there was genuine feeling behind it.
"I can make the introduction," Saleh said. "But I can't promise that the people in Abu Dhabi will agree to invest. You'd better go in with a solid plan."
Ryan got up right away, reached into his briefcase, and pulled out a document. "This is the plan I put together for the Germany trip."
Saleh had heard Ryan mention the Germany trip more than once. He took the document and read through it carefully. He didn't understand every detail, but he could tell it was thorough and well thought out.
This young man clearly put real work into the things he said he was going to do.
Ryan added, "My father had old connections in Germany from past collaborations. The plan was to use those relationships to organize a film investment and fundraising conference over there."
Everything from the plan itself to all the groundwork Ryan had laid made Saleh feel the genuine effort behind the project.
Compared to his brothers back in Abu Dhabi who were perfectly happy living off family wealth and doing nothing in particular, Ryan Anderson was someone who actually wanted to build something.
"What do you think of the plan?" Ryan asked.
Saleh handed the document back and said carefully, "It's solid."
Ryan followed up. "Do you think it could work if we moved it to Abu Dhabi instead?"
Saleh thought for a moment. "It shouldn't be a problem. The Investment Authority can assist with the arrangements. Though some details would need to be adjusted, food and other customs and so on."
"Of course," Ryan said with a nod. "We'll respect the customs of our Arab hosts in every way."
If securing the investment meant going there and eating nothing but vegetables for a week, so be it.
Saleh gave a few more pointers and then headed out quickly.
After the press conference wrapped up and everyone was back at the office, Ryan held a short internal meeting and got the whole team moving. Mary would start helping Saleh with the paperwork the next day. George would keep pushing media coverage. Robert would start pulling together all the materials they'd need.
He had heard that Gulf oil money moved casually and that even a legitimate royal family member like Saleh was essentially serving as a local guide for the trip, but Ryan wasn't going to get careless. Getting people to put money into something required being as thorough as possible at every step.
What he was preparing was a pitch that sat right on the edge, but the film project itself was real. All the groundwork was being done with complete sincerity.
Ryan assembled everything: company registration certificates, tax records, the full catalog of past productions, Producers Guild membership documentation, all the media coverage that had come out of the press conference. When the Los Angeles Times piece ran the following day, he went out and bought several physical copies. The article itself was small, barely a fist-sized column, but the reputation of the paper was worth more than the column inches.
The coverage, modest as it was, had an immediate effect. Within days, more than a dozen agents had submitted director and actor packages to Starlight Entertainment, and several more had called to ask about crew positions.
Ryan wasn't going to hire anyone yet. That all had to wait until after the Abu Dhabi trip. If the investment came through, The Purge could move into actual pre-production. If it didn't, he'd be looking at India or some other option.
Over the following week he stayed in regular contact with Saleh, who visited the Starlight office several times. When Saleh saw the film library with its dozens of titles, he came away satisfied that this was a small but genuinely established production company. With Ryan's permission, he sent a full package back to Abu Dhabi, including Starlight's company profile and the script for The Purge.
The response from Abu Dhabi surprised Ryan. The Investment Authority took it seriously enough to send a formal invitation and offered to cover the flights and accommodation for the Starlight team.
That made him happy, and also a little nervous. He wondered briefly if he'd overplayed his hand.
Then he thought about the kind of money sitting in Abu Dhabi, and the feeling passed.
Besides, this wasn't a scam. He genuinely intended to make The Purge.
In between all the preparation, Ryan kept reading and thinking. He was building a clearer picture of the economic landscape and quietly looking for ways to put Starlight on more solid footing beyond this one project. If the film turned profitable, it would open the door to other structures, including the possibility of a film fund. Leveraging outside capital was standard practice in the industry, and it was worth learning everything about how those vehicles worked.
As for why Abu Dhabi was taking this so seriously, Ryan had a pretty good idea. Covering Starlight's travel expenses was nothing to them. What they didn't have yet was recognition and global influence, and that was exactly what they were starting to chase.
He could remember how much money Abu Dhabi would eventually pour into the English Premier League alone just to build its profile. Hollywood reached every corner of the world, yet Arabs in Hollywood films were almost exclusively villains. Somebody over there had clearly decided it was time to start changing that.
Getting the formal invitation boosted Ryan's confidence considerably.
A known con artist, working with nothing but a fabricated project, had once gotten money out of experienced Hollywood insiders. The chances of a real project like The Purge getting a commitment from Arab investors who didn't fully understand the industry were reasonably good.
Even better, after attending the press conference, Saleh had called to say he would personally accompany Ryan to Abu Dhabi and help with all the preparations for the fundraising conference.
"I'm fresh out of school," Saleh said. "I need the practical experience."
Having a local with real connections in his corner, Ryan obviously wasn't going to say no.
Despite how well things were shaping up, he didn't relax. He found a lawyer who specialized in UAE commercial law and had the investment contract templates revised accordingly. He also put together several contingency plans for different scenarios.
The worst case was coming home empty-handed. That was survivable.
By the time the team was ready to leave, the materials they'd prepared filled dozens of large boxes. Anyone who saw it would have had no trouble believing this small team was fully committed to what they were doing.
It had also cost them. Over sixty thousand dollars had gone out of Starlight's account.
Ryan brought only Mary and Robert to Abu Dhabi. George stayed behind in Los Angeles with a budget and instructions to make sure The Purge kept turning up in the trades and entertainment press at regular intervals.
In mid-February, with Saleh as their guide and host, Ryan Anderson and his team boarded an Emirates Airlines flight and landed in Abu Dhabi as good friends of the UAE people.
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority gave them a warm welcome.
Dubai and Abu Dhabi were already the UAE's most recognized cities, and Abu Dhabi had developed considerably by this point. Sitting in the car from the airport, Mary couldn't stop asking questions.
"Is this really an Arab country? Cities like this exist here?"
Ryan kept his voice low. "They're extremely wealthy."
It wasn't just Abu Dhabi that didn't understand Hollywood. Americans didn't understand Abu Dhabi either. The image of Arabs that had taken root through decades of Hollywood films, shaped in no small part by certain industry interests, had colored how most Americans saw the entire region.
The team checked into the Emirates Palace Hotel, an ultra-luxury property that was among the finest in the world. There were media photographers set up outside the entrance when they arrived.
After adjusting to the time difference, before Ryan had even made a move toward the Investment Authority, a senior official from the Authority arrived at the hotel with Saleh to go over the itinerary in person.
From that point, with Saleh and the Investment Authority both helping, the names Ryan Anderson and Starlight Entertainment began appearing regularly in the local press. Dedicated staff from the Authority helped coordinate preparations for the fundraising conference. Ryan attended several official functions with Investment Authority representatives and gave two media interviews.
Somewhere in that process, he started to understand something. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority was also using him, at least to some extent. A Hollywood team coming to Abu Dhabi to pitch a film investment, regardless of whether the investment actually came through, was a meaningful political win. The internal competition among the Abu Dhabi elite was no less intense than anywhere else.
Starlight Entertainment and the fundraising conference quickly became a talking point in the city.
According to Saleh, the President of the UAE and ruler of the Abu Dhabi Emirate had personally asked about the Hollywood investment situation.
It was getting bigger than Ryan had planned for.
But there was no stepping back now, because he still didn't have the money.
The Investment Authority had helped with the preparations and the publicity, but they had never once sat down with him to discuss actually putting money into The Purge.
Ryan wasn't worried. A good hunter knew how to wait.
Besides, when he thought about the scale of the Investment Authority, he was actually more interested in winning over smaller private investors at the fundraising conference. Fewer complications down the road.
That said, if the Investment Authority decided to throw a few million dollars in, he wasn't going to turn it down.
On February 25, 1998, the three-day film investment and fundraising conference opened at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi.