In July, Abu Dhabi's film commission put out a press release about Dune: Part Three . The shoot had lasted 31 days in the emirate, two of them in Al Ain. It was the third of Denis Villeneuve's Dune films to shoot in the emirate, whose desert had a long life of its own before Hollywood found it . The release is generous with numbers. 206 local crew, including 12 stunt performers. 336 local contractors and drivers. 38 residents in the crowd scenes, six interns, more than 600 people based in the UAE in all. Somewhere in the middle it mentions that the production "benefited from Abu Dhabi's cashback rebate program."

How much it benefited, the release doesn't say. I went looking for that number, and for the same number anywhere else in the region, and spent the better part of a week finding out that it almost never exists in public.

I got there sideways.…