Several major movies have, however, already taken flight at the 586,800 sq.
ft. site in Hertfordshire, 15 miles outside central London.
Its those kinds of things that show the benefit of all the learnings.
Sky Studios ElstreeSky Studios
The studios team talks up the commitment to sustainability, access and training.
Sky expects to welcome 10,000 kids a year.
Given it servicesNBCUand Sky, a stream of big-ticket projects is guaranteed.
NBCUniversal
And thats kind of the point.
Both sides of the business were very enthusiastic, she adds.
The CEOs were on board.
It enabled us to make these two [Wicked] movies together at once.
We felt that pressure coming, says LaPlante.
Thats a big thing.
The studio was duly built.
Work started in late 2020 and was almost but not entirely complete when bothWickedmovies started shooting in Feb. 2023.
That delivered a sink or swim moment.
It was solving a lot of those puzzles that was probably the biggest challenge.
Wickedwas put on ice.
Getting back up and running took 10 weeks and the shoot restarted in January this year.
The strike impact onWickedis indicative of what happened in other facilities.
When Deadline visits Sky Studios Elstree, theres a buzz of activity, but its not full.
Has business returned to normal post-strike?
Its hard to speak to whats going on in other studios, but these things ebb and flow.
What does the future look like?
It was a slower start back up because people genuinely were not writing.
It just took time to get scripts back.
Between them, Sky and Universal have gone from looking for space to having to occupy it.
When you own a facility, your job is to fill it up, LaPlante says.
As we walk around, a local artisanal coffee seller is whizzing across the site in his small truck.
The local hotels were booked out a week before Deadline visits as Sky held a huge internal show-and-tell.
Further details are under wraps on what is a 2025 story in the making.
Owen Street says: You want to keep the investment within the UK.
When youve got lockouts at other facilities, theres plenty of business.
StudioCanalsPaddington in Peru, for instance, was the first big third-party project to shoot at the studio.
It lensed whileWickedhad shut down because it was unaffected by the strikes.
The plans have been blocked by the local authorities, but an appeal has been lodged against that decision.
If the expansion does ultimately get the go-ahead, it would mean more stages and more back lot space.
We also want to perfect the site.
There is stuff that we would like to build in that we didnt quite do the first time around.
