Marvel lends name to new Dubai theme park

Marvel Entertainment, the creator of popular comic book heroes X-Men and The Avengers, has announced it is to lend its name an indoor theme park at Dubai’s City of Arabia development.

The 350,000 sq ft Marvel Adventure project, being developed by Ilyas and Mustafa Galadari Group (IMG), will feature retail outlets, dining facilities and interactive entertainment.

IMG says the project, which is part of a larger 1.2m sq ft entertainment destination at City of Arabia, will open in late 2013. The firm says the attraction will bring in up to 10,000 visitors per day.

"This will be one part of the region’s largest temperature controlled entertainment destinations that IMG is developing which is sure to be a strategic landmark in Dubai, appealing to the region as well as other parts of the world,” said Ilyas Galadari and Mustafa Galadari, of IMG Group, in a statement.

The announcement of the Marvel theme park comes on the back of The Avengers movie's storming performance at the box office, where it raked in more than AED22.5m in the UAE alone, becoming the third-highest grossing film ever in the country.

IMG has not revealed the cost of the development, but in May lenders Al Hilal Bank and Mashreq said they had closed a shari’ah fund facility to help finance the at-the-time unnamed theme park in the Gulf emirate.

The US$5bn City of Arabia project, which will become home for 40,000 people, will be a self-contained urban community, with business and administrative offices, schools and clinics, supported by luxury apartments, shops, galleries, restaurants and attractions. 

Originally launched in 2005, it was slated to be completed by 2010 but was put on hold when the impact of the global economic crisis hit Dubai's real estate and construction industries.