THE CITY OF LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND — The Littlewoods building in Liverpool, a long, low-slung, and cavernous space built in the 1930s to house a betting and mail-order company, sat abandoned for two decades. No one wanted to take on the rotting monstrosity that loomed on the city's edges.
Until Lynn Saunders came along. She is the driving force behind it becoming the first film and television studio complex in Liverpool.
Ms. Saunders, the head of the Liverpool Film Office, described the location as "a beast of a setting." For most potential customers, it was too daunting. However, Littlewoods Studios is currently one of at least two dozen large plans to create or extend studio space across the United Kingdom, owing to a surge in TV and film production in the country.
Streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video are rushing to meet insatiable demand for content, and they've selected Britain as the location to do so, countering the slump in total investment in the country since it voted to leave the EU. According to the British Film Institute, the UK spent a record 5.6 billion pounds ($7.4 billion) on film and high-end TV projects in 2021, over 30% more than the previous peak in 2019. More than 80% of that money came from American studios or other international projects.
Studios, property developers, and municipal governments are scrambling to build more production space, certain that the demand for binge-worthy programming and movies will continue to grow.
The world's largest private equity firm, Blackstone, and Hudson Pacific Properties, which owns Sunset Studios, which includes the former homes of Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, have announced a £700 million investment to build the first Sunset Studios facility outside of Los Angeles, just north of London. It will be larger than any of its Hollywood studios, with 21 soundstages.
