The Ashford International Film Studios - from a newly-established U.K. studios investment fund – will be built on the site of a former railway works, and include four TV and film studios.
Ashford International Film Studios, a proposed £250 million ($305 million) new production facility outside of London, has received planning permission from its local authority.
The decision – which was made in a virtual council meeting Wednesday evening – means the development can now go ahead on the former site of Kent's Newtown Railway Works by U.K. studio investment group The Creative District Improvement Company (TCDI) and developers Quinn Estates.
Its backers claim that the project, first officially unveiled in March, is the biggest single investment in U.K. TV and film studios, which prior to the COVID-19 crisis had been in hot demand due to the U.K.'s production boom (which hit a record $4.7 billion in 2019), and hope for it to open its doors in early 2022.
The facility is set to include four TV and film studios over more than 22,000 square meters, creating in excess of 3,000 jobs, according to TCDI, and making it the largest TV and film studio new build outside London. Eyeing increased production demand from U.S. streaming giants, the developers have pointed to Ashford's Eurostar train stop, which connects to Amsterdam, where Netflix has its European hub.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter last month, Jeremy Rainbird, the producer who set up TCDI alongside Piers Read, was optimistic that U.K. production, effectively shut down in its entirety due to the coronavirus pandemic, would immediately pick back up.
"There’s a bottleneck forming at the moment," he says. "People are waiting for the starting pistol to go off. And when it does, we're going to finish all the productions on hiatus, and they're going to bring forward all of the other productions that perhaps might have been slated for next year. All this is doing is delaying the enormous spend to satisfy the enormous appetite that we have for content."
In April, TCDI announced a 500 million pound ($615 million) investment war chest for U.K. studio projects alongside its £50 million ($60 million) acquisition and extension of iconic London facility Twickenham Studios.
