Disney is bringing its theme park to the Middle East, the entertainment company announced on Wednesday.  

The new tech-forward park is set to go up on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island and will be “authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati,” Disney’s chief executive, Bob Iger, said. Mr. Iger described Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, as a destination “whose culture is rich with an appreciation of the arts and creativity.” 

The park’s food, design, and more will reflect the distinct culture of Abu Dhabi, the chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Josh D’Amaro, told CNN. “Every time we open a new experience or a theme park … it’s really important not just to take a theme park that might exist somewhere else and plop it into the ground in that new area that we would be going into,” Mr. D’Amaro said. 

The announcement is raising questions about how Disney will cater to the Islamic cultural norms, when its films and TV shows have increasingly contained gay themes. In 2022, the UAE banned the Disney film “Lightyear” because it showed an interracial lesbian kiss. In Abu Dhabi, same-sex activity is outlawed and punishable by up to 14 years in the Emirates’ notoriously dungeon-like prisons. 

The theme park will be built and managed by a local developer, Miral, which also helps run other themed resorts on Yas Island such as Ferrari world, Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi, and SeaWorld Yas Island. Yas Island is a man-made resort area situated some 30 minutes from Abu Dhabi’s city center. The island boasts shopping malls, theme parks, hotels, and other attractions. Alcohol can be sold at hotels there, even though it’s banned in much of the UAE, which is officially under Sharia Law.

“We’ve been doing this for 70 years now,” Mr. D’Amaro told the Hollywood Reporter. “We have different models in almost every resort that we operate in internationally and in this model, knowing Miral and knowing what they’ve built, how sophisticated they are, we felt very comfortable with them as our partner in building this seventh destination of ours.”

Mr. D’Amaro described Abu Dhabi as an “an international crossroads, a place that celebrates art and creativity and still celebrates their heritage,” which, he notes, “fits very nicely with the Disney company. 

Disney Abu Dhabi marks the entertainment company’s first new resort project since Shanghai Disneyland was announced in 2010. Although the company has not yet set a specific opening date, Mr. Iger noted that it takes between 18 months and two years to design a park and then another five years to build the infrastructure. 

The move comes as Disney is still facing backlash over its “woke” approach to its real-life revival of the Brothers Grimm classic, “Snow White.” The controversy-stricken film flopped at the box office and grossed only $69 million domestically and $145 million internationally on a production budget of $270 million — and millions of dollars more to market. 

In the last year, Disney has made a sharp pivot, reversing its aggressive embrace of “diversity, equity and inclusion” in its programming that intensified after the death of George Floyd. Mr. Iger said that politics is “bad for business.” Disney has largely stopped gratuitously adding gay characters and moments of gay intimacy to its films and TV shows, limiting their inclusion to when they would be an important part of a storyline.