The developer behind projects including celebrity hotspot Chiltern Firehouse, the St Pancras Renaissance hotel and Ealing Studios has emerged as a bidder to build a Hollywood-scale film studio in east London.
Harry Handelsman, whose Manhattan Loft Corporation is constructing a 42-story hotel and sky garden in east London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, has emerged as one of a handful of credible bidders vying to build the first new television and film studio in the capital in 25 years.
Handelsman’s involvement is thought to be part of a bid by Ealing Studios, Britain’s oldest studio, that his business bought alongside two other investors in the mid-2000s.
Bids to develop the eight-hectare (20-acre) site in Barking and Dagenham, which the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has said is an ideal location and “rare chance” to build a world-class studio facility in London, were submitted last Friday.
It is understood that about six bids are considered to be in contention, with the winner expected to be announced this week.
The frontrunner is considered to be Pinewood, the film studio behind Star Wars and James Bond, which is also doubling the size of its site in Shepperton, Surrey, to meet the explosion in demand of high-end TV and big-budget film making in the UK.
However, some of those involved in evaluating the bidders are said to have been concerned about Pinewood’s track record.
In 2015, Pinewood opened a studio in Wales in a deal with the Welsh government. There has been criticism of the supposed benefits to the economy that were promised, including the Welsh Conservatives saying that claims of thousands of new jobs had been “grossly exaggerated”.
The new Dagenham studio will be the largest in greater London and the first to be built since Three Mills, which is located between Bromley-by-Bow and West Ham in east London.
Three Mills is run by the London Legacy Development Corporation, which was set up to develop parts of east London after the 2012 Olympics and is also thought to be involved in a bid.
Darren Rodwell, the leader of Barking and Dagenham council, has previously told the Guardian that there were initially more than 20 expressions of interest in developing the site.
The London suburb lent its name to Made in Dagenham, the 2010 film about female workers protesting for equal pay at the local Ford factory in the 1960s, which was filmed in locations including Wales.
The borough’s film office has been involved in attracting a number of big-budget movies such as Doctor Strange and Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, as well as TV dramas including Channel 4’s Humans, ITV’s Liar and Netflix’s Black Mirror.
According to estimates, the Dagenham East studio could generate around 780 full-time jobs in the local area and £35m each year for the UK economy.
The UK’s top-quality studio facilities and production talent, along with lucrative government tax breaks, have fuelled a boom in film making that is leading to concerns about capacity and skills shortages.
Four of the top five earners at the British box office last year – Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast, Dunkirk and Paddington 2 – were based in the UK.
The British Film Institute has estimated that the film industry will need up to 10,000 new workers across a range of roles in the next five years to keep pace with demand.
