"This is Mr. Ryan Anderson, president of Starlight Entertainment."
"This is my cousin, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Director of the UAE Presidential Office and a senior official of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority."
Under Saleh's introduction, Ryan shook hands and exchanged brief pleasantries with the Abu Dhabi power broker.
After introducing both parties, Saleh politely excused himself.
Four people remained in the richly appointed conference room. Ryan sat across from Mansour, who had two men in their forties standing quietly behind him.
From the moment Ryan laid eyes on Mansour, his mind had been working. The name had felt familiar before, and seeing the man in person only made that feeling stronger. He looked four or five years older than Saleh, and there was something about that face, that particular Arab face, that Ryan was certain he'd encountered before somewhere in his memory.
"Mr. Anderson," Mansour said, his manner very polite. "Welcome to Abu Dhabi."
Ryan smiled. "Thank you. I'm genuinely grateful for the opportunity."
Then it came to him. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed. The man who would one day own Manchester City Football Club. By that point in Ryan's previous life, Mansour had become the public face of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, an organization rumored to be managing assets well in excess of a trillion dollars.
This was a serious figure.
Even setting aside everything he knew from his previous life, the two titles alone were enough.
Ryan had never sat across from anyone at this level before, and he felt a sharp stab of nerves. Royal background aside, a man who had risen this far in the Abu Dhabi hierarchy clearly had real ability. Getting him to genuinely open his wallet was not going to be a simple thing.
If this went wrong, everything he'd built up over the past weeks could collapse.
This was a real danger. But Ryan kept it completely off his face. A crisis was also an opportunity, if you kept your head.
If this meeting were happening ten years later, when Arab capital had already spread deeply through Western markets, he would have exchanged pleasantries and pulled back.
But this was 1998. After arriving in Abu Dhabi, Ryan had spent enough time around Investment Authority people to understand how they thought. Abu Dhabi wasn't just looking for profitable investments at this stage. They wanted a name. They wanted influence. They wanted the world to know who they were.
Mansour's eventual investment in the Premier League would make him a symbol of exactly that impulse. If he was here today, it was because that same drive was already alive in him.
If Mansour committed, the financing problem was solved.
Letting this chance slip through would be far more costly than any risk the meeting carried.
After a short exchange of pleasantries, Mansour got to the point. "Mr. Anderson, I understand you had a difficult experience with your last film."
He had attended the first day of the fundraising conference, gathered a considerable amount of material, and had personally directed the Investment Authority's US office to conduct an on-the-ground investigation into Ryan Anderson and Starlight Entertainment. The results hadn't come back yet, but Mr. Anderson's presentation and the detailed documentation, including the tax records, had been reassuring.
"Yes," Ryan said. There was no point in hiding it. "I raised six million dollars to produce an action film called Desperate Survival. It grossed eight hundred thousand dollars at the North American box office."
Mansour's brow furrowed slightly. The stout man standing behind him spoke up. "Your first film failed. What guarantee is there that the second one won't do the same?"
Their money came from oil, not from picking up loose change off the ground.
Ryan read the situation quickly. Mansour found it difficult to ask something that blunt directly. He had let his aide do it for him.
"Many of the greatest directors and producers in Hollywood didn't have successful debuts," Ryan said, meeting the question without flinching. "Spielberg, George Lucas. James Cameron's first film, Piranha II: The Spawning, was a complete failure."
The stout man looked skeptical. "James Cameron's first film also failed?"
Ryan smiled. "That's not a secret in Hollywood." He continued, "I'm not comparing myself to people of that caliber. But Desperate Survival was my first production. I was impulsive and made serious mistakes. The failure taught me exactly where I went wrong. I won't be making the same mistakes on this project."
Mansour smiled and shifted the conversation himself. "Saleh mentioned you've had considerable trouble with Jewish interests."
Ryan smiled back, a hint of bitterness in it, and began to say something before stopping himself. He glanced deliberately at the two men standing behind Mansour.
Mansour understood immediately. "You have my word, on the honor of the Al Nahyan family, that nothing discussed here leaves this room."
Truthfully, Ryan wasn't particularly worried about it spreading. He could come up with plenty of cover if needed. The glance was deliberate. He wanted Mansour to feel like what followed was a confidence, something shared between people who understood each other.
"You'll know already that Jewish influence in Hollywood is very strong," Ryan said, then let the weight of what he was about to say settle. "There's a point where it starts to look less like influence and more like control."
For the record, he didn't have a high opinion of either side of this particular conflict. But this was not the moment for personal feelings. He'd once read a line from a Hollywood executive that had stuck with him: don't get emotional. This is the entertainment industry. The moment you take it personally, you lose. That applied to everything, including who you spoke for and who you didn't.
Mansour nodded. "Hollywood, shaped by Jewish influence, has consistently smeared Arabs. Anyone who watches American films can see it."
"There are people inside Hollywood who don't like it," Ryan continued, keeping strictly to the truth. "But they've been suppressed and pushed to the margins. Anyone who pushes back too hard ends up paying for it." He thought briefly of Mel Gibson, one of the biggest stars and most decorated directors of his era, and what happened to him eventually.
Mansour's expression became more serious, though he also clearly understood that anti-Jewish sentiment, while widespread in America, was something that had to be handled carefully.
The conflict between the Arab world and the Jewish people ran deep, and the UAE committed enormous military resources to guarding against Israel.
"The Anderson family and Starlight Entertainment have always sat outside the pro-Jewish camp in Hollywood," Ryan said. This was entirely true. The Andersons had almost no dealings with Jewish people in the industry. "No Jewish blood in the family. We've kept our distance from that world throughout. And none of the films we've ever made has carried a message favorable to Jewish interests."
Outside of Desperate Survival, Starlight's catalog was straightforward grindhouse B-movies: simple, violent, deliberately absurd, with no nationalistic messaging or anything else designed to court a particular audience.
Ryan began layering carefully constructed additions onto the foundation of verifiable truth. "From the very beginning until today, the only financing Starlight Entertainment has ever received from the heavily Jewish-influenced film investment sector was a total of two million dollars in fully collateralized loans. That's it."
He let a flicker of real feeling show. "My father was genuinely talented. But without access to capital, he could never grow the company."
Old Anderson's conservatism, in Ryan's retelling, took on an entirely different meaning. "So many small companies that started when Starlight did have become mid-sized operations by now. Starlight is still in the same place it was ten years ago. The funding wasn't available to us, and neither were the distribution channels. Ten years of hard work, and all we could produce were direct-to-video titles just to stay alive."
"What happened to your father?" Mansour asked.
Ryan's eyes went slightly red. "He died in an accident."
Mansour said quickly, "I'm sorry."
"It's alright." Ryan continued. "He told me for years that he wanted to build Starlight into something real, to make films that mattered."
He spoke like a man honoring a debt to his father. "That's part of why I pushed so hard on Desperate Survival. I wanted to do what he never had the chance to do."
Mansour offered a quiet consolation. "You'll get there."
Ryan let a somber note come through. "If Hollywood weren't shaped the way it is, Starlight would be in a very different place right now."
Then he returned to verifiable ground. "I applied to the Producers Guild for emergency assistance through the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan. Starlight is a full member and pays its dues every year. That plan exists specifically to support members who run into difficulties. But the major studios control the Producers Guild, and the senior leadership at those studios is, as a rule, predominantly Jewish. Starlight was never aligned with that side of the industry. The application went nowhere."
Mansour nodded slowly, drawing a clear line between what Ryan was describing and everything he already understood about how Jewish interests operated across the world.
A sense of shared grievance was forming.
"Banks won't lend to us," Ryan continued. "Internal funding channels are closed. So we raise what we can ourselves. And whatever happens, I will not make a film that sings the praises of people who have been systematically working against us."
"That's exactly right," Mansour said firmly. "If you bend when they apply pressure, they only become more demanding."
From Mansour's tone and manner, Ryan felt he hadn't made any significant missteps.
There was no other way around it. When you needed to earn the trust of Arabs, the most direct path ran through the subject of Jewish interests.
"Mr. Anderson, I have a personal appreciation for how you've written the Arab characters in the script," Mansour said, shifting slightly. "But tell me something. Why not make an Arab the protagonist?"