One of Britain’s major film studios is to open an outpost in one of Merseyside’s most loved buildings as Liverpool pushes to become the “Hollywood of the north”.
Twickenham Studios – famous for award-winning films such as Blade Runner and The Italian Job as well as more recent TV hits Three Girls, McMafia and Black Mirror – has agreed to take 8,000 sq metres space in the enormous art deco Littlewoods building, which was once home to the football pools.
The £50m project is being overseen by regeneration specialists Capital & Centric, who bought the 17,000-sq metre site in 2017.
Completed in 1938, the complex began life as the headquarters of Littlewoods, then the country’s largest family-owned business empire, covering department chain stores, catalogue shopping, and football pools. It was requisitioned just a year after it opened, becoming the wartime home of the government’s postal censorship department, its vast printing presses used to print 17 million National Registration cards.
Littlewoods took it back in peacetime, but the last occupants moved out in the 90s and the building has been empty ever since. Capital & Centric plans to build two 2,000-sq metre sound stages for Twickenham studios next to the main building.
Liverpool council wants to turn the city into a film making Mecca and last year bought the old bus station next to the Littlewoods building to develop for the industry, with mayor Joe Anderson describing the purchase as “a major statement of intent to cement our reputation as the Hollywood of the North”.
Liverpool is becoming ever more popular with TV and film producers. In recent years blockbusters such as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool have been filmed in the city, as well as TV shows such as Peaky Blinders.
Last year alone, the city clocked up 1,359 days of filming across 289 projects.
Tim Heatley, co-founder of Capital & Centric, said: “Littlewoods is one of Liverpool’s most loved buildings – it’s only fitting that we give the city something they’ll be proud of. Twickenham Studios couldn’t be a better fit. They’ll bring a century’s worth of film-making heritage and help to write a new chapter for the creative industries in and around Liverpool.”
Maria Walker, chief operating officer of Twickenham Studios, said: “Liverpool’s architecture, accessibility and can-do attitude sees film-makers return to the city time and time again. With the added benefit of our studios, they’ll have access to gold-standard interior facilities right on the doorstep of unique exterior locations. It will be great to see Liverpool become an international focal point for TV and film.”
The announcement comes just a week after Liverpool made the shortlist of cities to become the new home to Channel 4’s regional base – with Littlewoods a core part of the city’s bid.
• This article was amended on 8 June 2018 because an earlier version was wrong to say that sound stages for Twickenham studios were being built on the site of an old bus station.
