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The studio referred to by Evans is the £50m project announced last year by property developers Capital & Centric and Twickenham Studios. Located in the city’s former Littlewoods building, the plan is to have two new 20,000 sq ft Hollywood-standard sound stages ready to go by 2020. There was a well-publicised fire at the site in late 2018, but this seems unlikely to cause a hold up. Tim Heatley, co-founder of Capital & Centric, says the legacy of the new studio will be that “Liverpool becomes a powerhouse for the film industry. We’re creating something that has been on the city’s wish list for a long time.” Liverpool Film Office’s Saunders says the city is thriving, thanks to its range of locations and talent for finding makeshift studio space. But she recognises that the launch of the new state-of-the-art studio will transform Liverpool’s ability to secure films and high-end TV series. “Thanks to platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, there’s a ferocious appetite for content — but with this comes increased competition from other areas of the UK and Europe,” she adds. Another key initiative, Saunders says, is the launch of a £2m production fund, which will be the first-ever English city-based fund of its kind. Launched at the end of March, it offers up to £500,000 to individual productions and can be combined with the UK’s tax credits. While keen to build Liverpool’s production base, Saunders actually has a bigger vision: a “connected northern offer” that includes Liverpool, Manchester and Yorkshire. “There’s such a rich talent base and strong infrastructure in the north,” she adds. “Between us, we could handle almost any production.” There is no question that Yorkshire has proved its credentials as a production hub and makes a formidable ally for its north-west counterparts.
diton. With the construction and studio spaces at The Bottle Yard, Bristol was the obvious place to base the production.” Worth noting also is that Bristol has proved more than capable of hosting modern dramas. Channel 4’s Kiri used the city’s urban streets and green spaces as its backdrop while also filming Bristol from the sky via drones. Hellboy used Waring House, a council block in the city’s Redcliffe area, for night shooting major scenes during September 2018. The UK production boom has also benefited the iconic northern city of Liverpool, which has become popular for both period and contemporary productions, with its ability to double for New York and London a notable attraction. Last year was a record-breaking one for the city, with 366 film and TV projects based in Liverpool and the wider region. That equates to 1,387 film days and £16.1m in revenues — up £5m on 2017. Among the high-end productions to have visited Liverpool are BBC period drama The War Of The Worlds, Sky One’s Bulletproof and Jimmy McGovern-penned Care. Meanwhile, the third season of Sky’s Tin Star has also just been announced for 2019. There was also activity around Peaky Blinders and the aforementioned Yesterday. “We’ve had three or four productions in the city every day of the year,” says Lynn Saunders, manager of Liverpool Film Office. “There used to be times when it would go quiet, but now there is production all year round.” Betsan Morris Evans, producer of The War Of The Worlds, says filming in Liverpool was “a fantastic experience. The Liverpool Film Office made our time in the city so easy, from closing roads and helping source locations. It was a wonderful working relationship. Every producer I know wants to film in Liverpool and the arrival of the new film studios will make it all possible.”
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