Bahrain and UK-based film production firm Gulf Atlantic Pictures is planning to produce up to six big budget feature films in Arabic, the company has announced.

The company is planning four to six films aimed at Arabic speaking audiences and is currently in the process of reading through potential scripts, James Black, the company’s London-based executive producer and head of production, told the Bahrain-based Trade Arabia news agency.

“Gulf Atlantic Pictures is committed to engage film industry talent from the Arab World both in front and behind the camera, as well as search out for the best available talent across the Arab world to work on the productions,” he was quoted as saying.

“We want to do for the Arab film market what Bollywood is doing in the Indian film market and introduce Middle Eastern audiences to glamorous new European locations. Using new backdrops and drawing from the well respected talents of British film industry technicians will immensely improve production quality and we believe will produce the highest quality Arab language films ever seen,” he added

Gulf Atlantic Pictures was established in early 2013 with the help of Gulf funding.

The firm is currently working on a new $35m spy movie set to star Hollywood action star Jason Statham, which was due to start filming this year in Bahrain but has been delayed after authorities could not find a suitable location to build a new 20,000 sq m film studio in time to start production.

The Bahrain Film Studio and Academy was due to be built by the end of 2013 for filming could start on action spy movie ‘Bulldog Drummond: Hero for Hire’.

A suitable location could not be found and filming has been delayed, meaning the film will not be released until 2015, according to a report by the Gulf daily News.

The film, due to star British Hollywood actor Jason Stratham in the lead role is being produced by London-based Twickenham Films and its sister company Oasis Films.

The film will follow the adventures of a fictional British spy, Bulldog Drummond and is based on a series of novels published between 1920 and 1954. James Bond author Ian Fleming has admitted he used the character as inspiration for his own series of novels and films.

The company is also working on a vampire production entitled ‘Dracula Beyond the Legend’, which will be set in London and will go into production in November 2013.