if
it's about Cardiff..
Sport, Entertainment, Transportation, Business,
Development Projects, Leisure, Eating, Drinking,
Nightlife, Shopping, Train Spotting! etc.. then we want it here!
Very good news, builds nicely on other media portfolio across city/region. Sparing a thought for Red Dragon near Pencoed.
It does make you wonder what they'll do long term with that site. It's such a shame as it was a nice idea in principle. What's the status of those studios these days ? Anyone know ?
Regardless of that Pinewood coming here is brilliant news. As you've said, it builds nicely on our media sector.
This is interesting. I gather that Pinewood have been having terrible trouble from planning authorities in expanding the Pinewood Studios. Threy already own Shepperton I believe.
They also own Teddington Studios which are closing down at the end of the year. Teddington is the former Thames Television complex and many TV shows are still produced there, so maybe these new studios will have TV facilities rather than film (or both)
Valleywood was under-financed from the start. The idea was good but you have to have facilities that are ready to go. That's why so much TV drama production in Wales is in existing buildings like the old Visteon (Ford) plant in Swansea and the former Tesco warehouse in Chepstow. I think Pinewood will do well here but I suspect there will be more TV than feature film work.
What's happened with TV drama in Wales over the past few years is pretty extraordinary. From a virtual standing start with Doctor Who in 2005 we've seen fantastic growth with more and more of the workforce locally based. It was pretty noticable when Doctor Who started that you saw very few Welsh names on the credits - now they're two-a -penny on Sherlock, Atlantis etc.
It could all go belly-up of course - but it's one of the few encouraging things to have happened to the Welsh economy over the past decade.
Yes of course, it never made much sense to me why they didn't focus in on Cardiff (or Swansea or Newport for that matter) for that sort of project to begin with.
Pinewood were refused planning permision to expand on the edge of london, the NIMBY brigade argued that it was green-belt land, regarless of the fact the the land Pinewood wanted to develop is traped between their existing site and the M25, not exacatly prime green-belt if you ask me!! But hey! London's loss is Cardiff's gain.
The ISLE OF mAN GOVERNMENT has been lambasted for giving £30m for pinewood studios, without any major film productions since it was set up in 2012. The only one being the flopped Susan Boyle movie.
There were bad-tempered exchanges in the House of Keys as Liberal Vannin MHKs pressed the Treasury Minister over details of investments in film productions.
Kate Beecroft (Douglas South) became frustrated when Eddie Teare refused to give a breakdown of the size of the investment in each of the four film projects approved since the Pinewood deal was signed, claiming ‘commercial confidentiality’.
This prompted the Treasury Minister to suggest Mrs Beecroft should keep her blood pressure down as there is a ‘lot of strain on the health service at the moment’.
Clearly angered by that comment, the Douglas South MHK thanked Mr Teare for his concern but said her GP had stated her blood pressure was that of a teenager.
Mr Teare said that since the transfer of the Media Development Fund to Pinewood Film Advisors in October 2012, Treasury has approved four projects in film production and invested a total of £7,801,000.
He said: ‘This is slightly ahead of our original expectation of two films per annum as quoted in our original proposal. The policy is to invest in a slate of films and each film should be considered as part of a portfolio.
‘Members will appreciate that the individual investment made in each film is a matter of commercial confidentiality, given the very nature of the business, the interests of the co-investors and the prospective future return we would expect to generate.’
Mrs Beecroft asked why he could not give a breakdown of amounts invested in each film, when the previous Treasury Minister could when funds were managed by CinemaNX.
Mr Teare said that we are now dealing with a plc and there are other co-investors in the films whereas before that was not normally the case.
‘So therefore there are commercial confidentialities here and I am not prepare to give details of the investments in each individual film,’ he told MHKs.
The Treasury Minister said the films involved are Camera Trap, Christmas Candle, Pressure and Our Robot Overlords.
Mrs Beecroft said she did not want to know the amounts invested by other parties - only that invested on behalf of the Manx taxpayer. Mr Teare repeated that he was not prepared to break commercial confidentiality.
Lib Van leader Peter Karran (Onchan) suggested that when people cited commercial confidentiality then ‘they’ve got something to hide’.
Alfred Cannan (Michael) suggested the Minister admit the Pinewood investment had been ‘entirely inappropriate’.
Basically The IoM has invested in Pinewood on a small scale to try and attract production to the Isle as a filming location. Pinewood never made any commitment to build facilities on the IoM.
The Welsh Assembly deal is far better as it means real investment in Wales which leads to solid jobs and film/tv facilities.
