Soundstage Expansion Now Feeling Crunch of Production Contraction
As the world nervously looks for signs of an oncoming recession, one wonders if the entertainment industry isn’t experiencing its own version of a housing bubble.
The streaming wars-era content boom led to a massive expansion of soundstage facilities — the often-sprawling, industrial studio spaces dedicated to the creation of films and TV shows — across major production centers.
In 2018, the last year before the streaming wars began in earnest, soundstage space totaled 17 million square feet across six of the top production regions (including Los Angeles, the U.K., Georgia, New York, Ontario and British Columbia); it’s now more than 29 million square feet, according to a recent FilmLA study.
Data shared with VIP+ by soundstage industry tracker StageRunner shows the scope of this construction surge, which included two enormous (more than a half-million square feet) facilities in Atlanta — not to mention Tyler Perry’s much-hyped complex in the area — a 17-stage addition to the U.K.’s Shepperton Studios and Netflix’s expansion of its Albuquerque studio, accompanied by a $1 billion production-spending commitment for New Mexico.
But all this growth, set in motion during a historic boom cycle for film and TV production, is now bumping up against the realities of a bust cycle. FilmLA’s study also found that Los Angeles’ soundstage occupancy plunged to an annual average of 63% in 2024 after years of near-capacity operation.
This isn’t merely a result of the city’s much-discussed decline as a production hub. In the U.K., the famed Pinewood Studios complex is rethinking plans for a billion-dollar expansion in light of the ongoing production slowdown and, according to a StageRunner report, “is now proposing a revised plan that combines a smaller film production studio with a data center.”
Meanwhile, Winnersh Studios outside London — one of the filming locations for last year’s “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” — is set to be torn down, the BBC reported this week, having apparently sat empty since April 2024. And back in L.A., Warner Bros. Discovery sold the 27-acre Burbank Studios — a property the pre-merger WB purchased in 2019 with an eye on expansion — back to developer Worthe Real Estate Group last year. Even Tyler Perry is pulling back on expansion plans amid the industry turbulence.
Taken together, these make for ill portents for the many soundstage construction projects still in progress or consideration, which StageRunner’s data pegs at more than 7 million square feet in the U.S. alone.
Yet the sector is not completely without opportunities. The detail noted above that the U.K.’s Pinewood is considering a data center for its complex points to the growing prominence of the latest tech in filmmaking. As StageRunner pointed out, “As the industry increasingly embraces virtual production, cloud-based workflows, and AI-driven post-production, infrastructure that supports these advancements may become just as critical as traditional soundstage space.”
Indeed, virtual production stages are already becoming more common around the world. Developers may want to be wary of pursuing another gold rush, but studios are adopting virtual production techniques at an amazingly rapid pace (the list of projects that have used it already runs the gamut from “The Mandalorian” to “The Muppets Mayhem”), and the tech’s advantages as a cost-saving measure are readily apparent, eliminating the need for tedious post-production work or laborious location shooting.
It’s possible, then, that one construction bonanza in the soundstage space will merely be replaced by another. But a little more caution may be advisable: Current trends indicate film and TV production is still in a contracted state, and it’s anyone’s guess how many more soundstages will ultimately end up demolished, unfinished or simply unbuilt.
And unlike that other housing bubble, this is one area where there’s likely no government bailout coming.
The streaming wars-era content boom led to a massive expansion of soundstage facilities — the often-sprawling, industrial studio spaces dedicated to the creation of films and TV shows — across major production centers.
In 2018, the last year before the streaming wars began in earnest, soundstage space totaled 17 million square feet across six of the top production regions (including Los Angeles, the U.K., Georgia, New York, Ontario and British Columbia); it’s now more than 29 million square feet, according to a recent FilmLA study.
Data shared with VIP+ by soundstage industry tracker StageRunner shows the scope of this construction surge, which included two enormous (more than a half-million square feet) facilities in Atlanta — not to mention Tyler Perry’s much-hyped complex in the area — a 17-stage addition to the U.K.’s Shepperton Studios and Netflix’s expansion of its Albuquerque studio, accompanied by a $1 billion production-spending commitment for New Mexico.
But all this growth, set in motion during a historic boom cycle for film and TV production, is now bumping up against the realities of a bust cycle. FilmLA’s study also found that Los Angeles’ soundstage occupancy plunged to an annual average of 63% in 2024 after years of near-capacity operation.
This isn’t merely a result of the city’s much-discussed decline as a production hub. In the U.K., the famed Pinewood Studios complex is rethinking plans for a billion-dollar expansion in light of the ongoing production slowdown and, according to a StageRunner report, “is now proposing a revised plan that combines a smaller film production studio with a data center.”
Meanwhile, Winnersh Studios outside London — one of the filming locations for last year’s “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” — is set to be torn down, the BBC reported this week, having apparently sat empty since April 2024. And back in L.A., Warner Bros. Discovery sold the 27-acre Burbank Studios — a property the pre-merger WB purchased in 2019 with an eye on expansion — back to developer Worthe Real Estate Group last year. Even Tyler Perry is pulling back on expansion plans amid the industry turbulence.
Taken together, these make for ill portents for the many soundstage construction projects still in progress or consideration, which StageRunner’s data pegs at more than 7 million square feet in the U.S. alone.
Yet the sector is not completely without opportunities. The detail noted above that the U.K.’s Pinewood is considering a data center for its complex points to the growing prominence of the latest tech in filmmaking. As StageRunner pointed out, “As the industry increasingly embraces virtual production, cloud-based workflows, and AI-driven post-production, infrastructure that supports these advancements may become just as critical as traditional soundstage space.”
Indeed, virtual production stages are already becoming more common around the world. Developers may want to be wary of pursuing another gold rush, but studios are adopting virtual production techniques at an amazingly rapid pace (the list of projects that have used it already runs the gamut from “The Mandalorian” to “The Muppets Mayhem”), and the tech’s advantages as a cost-saving measure are readily apparent, eliminating the need for tedious post-production work or laborious location shooting.
It’s possible, then, that one construction bonanza in the soundstage space will merely be replaced by another. But a little more caution may be advisable: Current trends indicate film and TV production is still in a contracted state, and it’s anyone’s guess how many more soundstages will ultimately end up demolished, unfinished or simply unbuilt.
And unlike that other housing bubble, this is one area where there’s likely no government bailout coming.