One is known as the entertainment capital of the world and the other as the birthplace of the roundabout. But Hollywood and Hertfordshire are now beginning to converge as the British county and its neighbours become one of the most productive film-making areas in the world.
The announcement that Sunset Studios is building an outpost in Broxbourne is the latest development in a UK production boom in which film-makers spent £3.6 billion on 300 film and television productions in the first half of this year.
There are other plans for new studio space at Marlow in Buckinghamshire, Farnborough in Hampshire and Shinfield in Berkshire. There are new developments in Dagenham and Enfield in Greater London and planned expansions at Pinewood, Buckinghamshire and Leavesden, Hertfordshire. There are also stages opening in Liverpool, Manchester and Newport.
Shepperton, Pinewood’s sister studio in Surrey, is opening 17 additional stages, making it the largest film studio outside China.
The boom means that British landscapes will become ubiquitous in film and television as Glasgow doubles for New York and Liverpool for Gotham City. In recent months makers of the DC comic adaptation The Flash filmed at St Paul’s Cathedral in London and chose Burghley House in Stamford, Lincolnshire, to double as Wayne Manor, Batman’s home.
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Matt Gallagher, the founder of the crew website The Call Sheet, said: “We’ve never known it this busy. Everybody says that it’s crazy out there and people are struggling for crew. If you want to make that move into the film and TV industry, now is the time.”
There are more than 60 large-scale productions either shooting or in pre-production, more than double the number in January 2020. Britain was already a popular destination for Hollywood film-makers because of its longstanding generous tax breaks but production levels have reached new heights because of a race for dominance by the streaming platforms Apple, Amazon, Disney Plus and Netflix.
Geoffrey Macnab, the author of Stairways to Heaven, a history of the British film industry, said that more people were working in movies now than in the golden age of film-making in the 1930s.
Demand is so high that makers of The Essex Serpent, a television series by Apple TV, had to rethink one sequence because they could not get a crane.
Several industry sources said that studio space was expanding quickly enough but staff training was lagging behind.
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“Behind the scenes, everyone’s very worried about it because they don’t have enough crew,” one source said. “In my lifetime, this is the busiest we have ever been and it’s going to get busier. We are in danger of losing stuff if we don’t meet demand.
“Lots of people who are getting jobs at the moment are not trained for them. There’s very little on the job training. A lot of people are getting sacked because they’re underprepared and underqualified.” The source said that the British Film Institute was trying to address the problem but struggling.
“Everyone who comes out of university needs to be retrained by the industry and the industry doesn’t have time to do it,” the source said.
Andrew M Smith, corporate affairs director of the Pinewood Studios Group, said it was building five additional stages as well as the 17 at Shepperton. “The more pressing challenge than infrastructure facing the UK film industry is the need to attract more people and train them in order to bridge the increasing skills gap,” he said.
There are reports some crew members are dropping contracts because they are receiving better offers, which would once have meant being ostracised by the industry.
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Gallagher said: “The larger streaming services and studios such as Apple, Disney, Amazon, Warner Bros and Netflix pay the highest rates and independent film-makers are getting left behind in terms of finding crew.”
He added that if filmgoers and television viewers look closely they will see increasing numbers of British locations appearing in the background, such as the Sainsbury Centre art gallery in Norwich doubling for the Avengers headquarters in the Marvel films.
“UK locations are able to double for almost anywhere. Some of the new Jurassic Park was filmed in Black Park in Buckinghamshire. Liverpool has doubled for New York in Florence Foster Jenkins and will be the new Gotham in Robert Pattinson’s Batman.”
Star power
July Harrison Ford’s double rode through the streets of Glasgow, posing as New York, in a chase scene for the fifth Indiana Jones film. It included a brass band celebrating the return of the Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969.
June Ezra Miller, titular superhero in The Flash, appeared with Michael Keaton at St Paul’s Cathedral, a backdrop in the fictional Central City. Burley House, Lincolnshire, will double as Batman’s base.
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March Elizabeth Olsen filmed in Richmond Park for a Marvel production rumoured to be the second in the Dr Strange series.
