Richest man in the world to fund a movie featuring Egypt’s Omar Sharif

The richest man in the world, Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim Helu, will fund a movie inspired by the French novel “Ports of Call” featuring Egypt’s Omar Sharif.

Enas Bakr, general manager of Sharif, told Al Arabiya that Helu, who highly admires Sharif, agreed to fund the movie, which will cost around $40 million.

Bakr said that the priest and the American Paul-Gordon Chandler, who is a sponsor of an Angelican church in Cairo, was riding on a plane from the United States to Egypt and read the novel and wanted to transform the story into a movie.

When he arrived to Cairo he made a phone call to Helu, whom he happens to know, and the business magnate accepted the deal. 

Helu, who is originally Lebanese, sits on a fortune mounting to $74 billion. Sharif as well as the French writer of the novel, Amin Maalouf, are originally Lebanese.

Source: Alarabiya