Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke, Netflix‘s new Saudi comedy film, starts where most stories about money end: after the money is gone. The AlThahabi family of Riyadh, snobbish and used to a surname that opens doors, learns it is nowhere near as wealthy as it believed. The synopsis gives them one route and treats it as survival. Fake the fortune, and keep faking it in front of everyone whose opinion the family lives on.

The Arabic title is more exact than the English one. The film is called AlMahaitiya, roughly “the show-offs”, from the Gulf slang for flaunting what you have. The English title describes a bank balance. The Arabic one names a habit, and a habit is harder to lose than money.

A household cast like a production crew

The character list released with the announcement draws the family in a few strokes. Rashed Al Shamrani plays Sultan, the patriarch and chairman. Ghada AlMulla is his wife Alanoud, a socialite. Ida AlKusay plays Reem, the daughter described as the planner. Ziyad Alamri is Bandar, a son who calls himself a world-renowned actor, and Adwa Bader plays Lulu, the youngest.

Read as a list, those roles look less like a family than a small theatre company. There is a public face with a title, a hostess who manages the room, someone who handles logistics and a performer who already believes his own billing. The premise suggests the comedy will come from that division of labour. A lie about wealth is expensive to stage, and every member of this house has a department.

Read this way, the premise treats wealth as a matter of surfaces. A family pretending to be rich has to become its own art department, and the setup rests on a simple question of materials: how long a façade can stand when nobody is paying for it.

An Egyptian pairing on Riyadh ground

Behind the camera, Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke is an Egyptian comedy partnership working on a Saudi story. Director Ahmed El Gendy made the features Rocky Elghalaba and Fasel Men El Lahazat El Lazeeza, and co-directed later seasons of the long-running comedy series El Kebeer Awy. Screenwriter Ayman Wattar has written for him before, on The Men of the House and Marry Me Again?, which makes this their third collaboration. Wattar also wrote the series Catalog.

El Gendy’s recent films are broad popular comedies. Moving that register to Riyadh means the jokes have to land on local codes of reputation and hospitality, and that is where the cast carries weight.

Rashed Al Shamrani is a veteran of Tash ma Tash, the Saudi television satire that spent years sending up everyday social habits. Fahad Albutairi, a Saudi comedian who appeared in the anthology Alkhallat+ and the Saudi version of The Office, is also in the cast, alongside Fayez Bin Jurays of Hobal. Netflix has not said whom either of them plays. Adwa Bader comes from Naga, while Ghada AlMulla and Ida AlKusay have worked steadily across recent Saudi drama and comedy.

Hospitality as a scoreboard

The pressure the film leans on is one most Saudi viewers will recognise before the first scene. Guides to Saudi etiquette describe hospitality as something close to a competition, in which a host who is not generous enough risks being thought cheap. For a family like the AlThahabis, whose standing rests on being seen to have money, that standard turns each invitation into an audit.

Farce works by making each lie cost more than the one before, and a lie about money comes with its own escalation. The more convincingly you perform wealth, the more wealth people expect you to spend. Netflix’s own tags file the film as quirky and heartfelt, a family dramedy rather than pure slapstick. That hints the bill will come due inside the house as well as outside it.

Why Netflix wants this one to travel

The English title is a plain wink at Crazy Rich Asians, a film Netflix itself lists beside the new release on its page. The borrowing is shrewd. It tells a viewer in São Paulo or Seoul what kind of evening this is before they know a single name in the cast, and it translates a very Saudi story into a vocabulary of status anxiety that audiences everywhere already speak.

That is the wager: a local comedy of manners can find a global audience when the fear underneath it is shared. Keeping up with the neighbours was not invented in Riyadh. What the AlThahabis will have to answer is the question their Arabic title quietly asks. If everyone believes the performance, what exactly separates being rich from being believed?

Release date, cast and where to watch

Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke is a feature film, not a series. It premieres exclusively on Netflix on October 1, 2026, in Arabic, and Netflix has not announced a running time. Ahmed El Gendy directs from a screenplay by Ayman Wattar. The cast is led by Rashed Al Shamrani, Ghada AlMulla, Ida AlKusay, Ziyad Alamri and Adwa Bader, with Fahad Albutairi and Fayez Bin Jurays.