A United Arab Emirates group has announced plans to build a 20th Century Fox World theme park in Dubai.
The park would open in 2018, with design and production work by Rethink Leisure & Entertainment, the firm headed by former Disney Imagineer and BRC Imagination Arts COO Scott Ault. Al Ahli Holding Group is developing the park under license from Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products.
The park's press release said that the park would feature Fox franchises such as Ice Age, Rio, Planet of the Apes, Aliens, Predator, Night at the Museum and Titanic, The Simpsons and Sons of Anarchy. (You don't need to look too closely to see the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant in the concept art below.)
Note that this is not part of the Dubai Parks and Resorts project, which is building the multi-studio Motiongate Dubai theme park, opening next year, that we featured on the front page yesterday. This would be the world's second Twentieth Century Fox World theme park, following the planned Fox World park that was announced in 2013 for Resorts World Genting in Malaysia. Originally slated for a 2016 debut, that project has been pushed back until late 2017.
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Universal only has the Simpsons rights in the areas where they've built Simpsons attractions, I would assume.
Theme park IP rights typically are negotiated by market. Unless Universal had firm plans to expand into the Middle East, there's no reason for them to pay Fox for The Simpsons rights in that market.
For other examples: You'll see Snoopy and the Peanuts characters in Universal Studios Japan... and Cedar Fair parks in the United States. Madagascar is in the SeaWorld parks in the US and in Universal in Singapore. And, of course, there's Marvel in Universal in Florida and Japan, and in Disney parks elsewhere.
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Can they do Simpsons? That doesn't seem right.