Studios rush to expand as demand soars

Broadcast

New facilities are being built around the country and existing sites are adding extra stages, but there is concern over soaring energy costs and a lack of crew.

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Investment in studios topped £4.77bn last year, reflecting the UK’s evergreen appeal to high-end TV producers. Space remains oversubscribed, crew shortages are acute and rising energy costs are putting the sector under further pressure, but with more stages, training schemes and strategies to combat inflation coming on stream, it is not a perfect storm – yet.

“The scale of shows keeps increasing and impacting demand on space,” says Barnaby Thompson, partner at Ealing Studios. “From wardrobe and props stores to offices, everything is growing exponentially.”

Ealing has a relatively small campus (four acres) and is building an additional 14,000 sq ft stage and workshops. But that won’t open until August 2024.

“We’re the traditional home of low-budget features and BBC drama. Now it’s much more about shows for Netflix, Apple and Amazon,” says Thompson. “Some studios have been taken out of circulation but the UK has had a historic shortage of stages. We’ve been full for the past eight years.”

Amazon Prime has a 10-year lease on nine sound stages at Shepperton Studios. Disney has a similar deal at Pinewood. Apple has secured facilities at Symmetry Park in Aylesbury and Netflix plans to double the size of its production base at Shepperton.

Elstree, where Sky and NBCU opened a 13-stage complex in 2022, is “100% full”, says consultant operations director Rebecca Hawkes. The BBC occupies three studios and The Crown holds the remaining footprint – though Netflix will vacate after the final series shoots next summer.

There is around 6 million sq ft of production facilities in the UK, according to real estate consultant Knight Frank, but with total production spend forecast to double over the next five years to £11.16bn, it is reasonable to assume that space requirements will need to increase by a similar proportion.

“The supply of film studios is insufficient to keep pace with the rising demand for new content,” says William Matthews, head of commercial research at Knight Frank. “This shortage is placing sustained upward pressure on rents, driving the case for new development and investment in the sector.”

RD Studios opened in April with more than 45,000 sq ft of space in Park Royal, London. While owner Ryan Dean was looking to fulfil demand for space from commercials clients, the new studio has been booked up with drama, doc reconstructions and sitcoms for clients including Apple TV+, Factual Fiction, Pulse Films and ITV Studios.

“We target everyone and because we have five sound stages inside the North Circular, we get a good mix,” says managing director Stephanie Hartog.

Crew shortage

As new space expands, the lack of skilled crew is a pressure point – and a supply shortage means crew are more selective. “Crews don’t like having to travel a great distance, and since the majority still live in and around the M25, it means that London area facilities tend to win out,” says Hartog.

The answer is to focus on training. “When I came into the industry, it felt like a closed shop run by a few families,” says Thompson. “That’s changed but we still have to find a way to get the message out that there are opportunities here. The one thing that will hold us back as an industry is the lack of crew.”

Laura Aviles, senior film manager at Bristol City Council, points to a shortage of location unit managers and line producers. “Before we greenlit expansion [at Bottle Yard Studios], we wanted to make sure we could sustain three new stages and our feasibility assessment did flag that there would not be enough crew to service 11 stages.”

A workforce development programme is expected to create 860 jobs in Bristol over the next 10 years, and similar schemes are happening around other studio hubs: Stage Fifty’s new studio in Wycombe will support about 1,200 jobs, with many introduced via its own training scheme.

Rising energy costs are a global issue, but film and TV production can be particularly energy-intensive. “The cost of energy is definitely having an impact,” says Maidstone Studios commercial director Josephine Clark. “Productions aren’t getting bigger budgets so we are all having to find cost-effective, imaginative ways to deliver efficiencies.”

Most studios are rented exclusive of electricity costs, so productions are facing higher bills, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine inflaming the situation. “The prices we quoted [before the invasion] are obsolete now,” says Garden Studios chief executive and founder Thomas Hoegh. “That is hurting. We have to adopt a more variable pricing model. No one predicted a war.”

Dock 10 head of studios Andy Waters says one way studios can help broadcasters who are feeling the squeeze “is to maximise their studio time, for example, by helping record more shows per day”.

The introduction of virtual-set technology at Dock 10 gives clients the flexibility to build any set in any size studio. It can, for example, operate virtual set productions of Gran Turismo Championships, BBC Bitesize and Match Of The Day at the same time.

Stage Fifty will claim the world’s largest virtual production volume (30,000 sq ft) when it opens in Winnersh next year. “We see VP as a staple studio service,” says chief executive James Enright. “Filmmaking has always relied on scenic backdrops and VP is the modern version of this.”

Other studios are more reticent. DNEG and Dimension have booked two stages for VP exploration at RD Studios until June, but Hartog is reluctant to invest in a permanent facility until demand dictates.

Even Garden Studios, which is opening two new VP training stages and a third volume dedicated to R&D “with a significant partner” in the new year, “would not have a business but for short-form content”.

Hoegh says: “Music promo and commercials are more willing to take risks than film and TV. The interest in VP is extraordinary but when it comes to actual bookings, there is some latency.”

The prospect of studio capacity doubling by 2026 is real. Among dozens of projects is the £700m, 21-stage Sunset Studios complex in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, which is due to open in 2025.

The question is whether any of these will end up as white elephants. “Demand for drama may soon level out but since there are not as many TV studios, I think the demand for TV and sports facilities will continue steadily,” says Clark.

Hoegh, by contrast, says it is “damn obvious there will be over-capacity”.

“It will be a blood bath,” he says. “They are building the same facilities in Belgium, France and Scandinavia who will fall over each other with incentives.”

But, he adds: “The UK’s advantage is its people. We have a lot of people who know how to do this stuff. The UK will be resilient.”