A media investment firm that has bankrolled shows including Line of Duty has raised $180m (£136.6m) to fund new films and TV series and intends to build a Hollywood-style studio, as the UK struggles to keep up with the demand for production space.
London-based Great Point Media (GPM), which recently partnered with the Hunger Games-maker Lionsgate to build a $100m studio complex in Yonkers, New York, is close to a deal on a site to build at least one large-scale studio in the UK.
GPM has raised $100m from the US institutional fund manager MC Credit Partners, adding to the $80m it has already raised, with the aim of pushing its media investment war chest to half a billion dollars in the next 18 months.
“We are experiencing a golden era in the UK’s creative industries,” said Jim Reeve, the chief executive of GPM. “Competition is fuelling demand for more original content from film studios, TV companies and other platforms like the streamers. However, there is still a massive shortage of studio space to cater for this. We want to play a leading role in the development of more studio space and the production of more quality content, not only in the UK but also across Europe and North America.”
GPM is in the process of assessing seven potential sites to build film and TV studios in the UK, US and Europe. The UK is in a race to keep up with demand for studio capacity to cope with the increasing number of productions being filmed each year. Last year, more than 200 films and 120 high-end TV shows were made in the UK with a total production spend of more than £3bn.
Earlier this month Sky unveiled plans to build a large-scale studio complex north of London to cater for its growing pan-European production needs, as well as those of NBCUniversal, which owns The Fast and the Furious maker Universal Studios. Both are owned by the US pay-TV giant Comcast.
Earlier this year Netflix struck a deal to set up a permanent production base at Shepperton, home to films including Alien and Mary Poppins Returns. And Disney has secured exclusive space at Pinewood Studios, home to Star Wars and James Bond.
