A new Hollywood-style production studio planned for Ashford in Kent has come a step closer after securing £250m in funding, as its backers aim to capitalise on the Netflix-led boom in TV and film production.
The project is being led by Piers Read, producer of The Inbetweeners and Peep Show, and Jeremy Rainbird, who launched Merman, the production company behind shows including Channel 4’s Catastrophe.
The proposed site is the derelict Newtown railway works, a locomotive manufacturing site from 1847 until it was shut in the early 1980s.
The site, based in the UK’s longest-listed building, will be part of a 240,000 sq ft development that will include four TV and film studios, as well as an educational hub, film school, 120-room hotel and 302 private residential units.
The duo’s company, The Creative District Improvement Company, has teamed up with Quinn Estates to develop the site, which they said would generate 3,000 jobs when complete.
Rainbird said the project is on track to break ground by the end of this year despite the coronavirus pandemic.
“We are looking across the valley, not into it,” he said. “There will be even greater demand for studio space than there is now once this is all over. Everyone will need space.”
The spread of the coronavirus has led to the temporary shutdown of the vast majority of the UK production industry, including halting the filming of shows from Line of Duty and Peaky Blinders to Sky’s fantasy drama Britannia and the David Tennant-starring drama Around the World in 80 Days.
The developers are hoping to get final planning permission at a meeting of Ashford borough council this Wednesday, which is to be held “virtually” due to the coronavirus.
A string of new studios are planned across the UK including the 30-acre Mercian Studios in Birmingham, sponsored by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, and a new Twickenham Studios-run 300,000 sq ft operation in the Littlewoods building in Liverpool.
Last year, more than £3.6bn was spent on making Hollywood hits such as the latest James Bond film No Time To Die and Sam Mendes’s 1917, as well as prestige dramas such as Netflix’s The Crown and the BBC’s His Dark Materials. In total, 311 films and high-end TV shows – those costing more than £1m an episode to make such as Game of Thrones – were made in the UK last year.
