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In a fictional world, it would make a charming film comedy. A profit-seeking corporation tries to move to a quaint English town and is repelled by a plucky band of local folk who charm the unwanted visitors into leaving them alone. Call it Hollywood on Thames, a long-awaited sequel to Local Hero, the whimsical 1983 film about a Scottish village and an energy company from Houston.
In the real world, it is no joke. The rejection of a £750mn film studio scheme on the outskirts of Marlow, a Saxon town west of London, says something worrying about the UK’s ambitions to expand its film and television industry. A studio lot on a former gravel quarry is not Local Hero’s oil refinery by a pristine beach, and many other countries would grab the offer.
Marlow Film Studios was backed among others by James Cameron, the Titanic film director, who saw it as a potential European base for his Lightstorm 3D special effects company. It promised 2,000 direct jobs and £3.5bn in production investment over a decade, joining a cluster around Pinewood Shepperton and Warner Bros’ studio in Leavesden, where Barbie was made.
But it collided with Save Marlow’s Green Belt, a pressure group that was worried about traffic, and did not want a view of the Chiltern Hills from the Thames to be interrupted. Sam Kershaw, a retired technology executive who is among the group’s organisers, told me this week that the studio would have been “very large, overbearing and out of character” for the town.
The character activists won, despite the scheme’s promise to devote 36 hectares of land to biodiversity and a country park. Buckinghamshire Council blocked the plan after its officers ruled that it would “result in spatial and visual harm to the openness of the Green Belt” and cause “additional on-street parking”. Goodbye Hollywood; carry on, patch of scrubland.
I do not wish to be rude to the good folk of Marlow, who live in a place known for its literary history and natural beauty, and have legitimate concerns, but this is ridiculous. If you cannot place infrastructure for one of the UK’s most dynamic industries on reclaimed land by a dual carriageway linked to the nearby M40 motorway, it will be very difficult to revive flagging economic growth.
There was a prisoner-of-war camp before the quarry, in the days when force majeure led to quick decisions, but building takes longer now. This is not for want of trying: the government has supported the film and streaming television industry with tax breaks that it extended earlier this year. Prime Minster Rishi Sunak enthused about its potential on a visit to Pinewood before calling the election.
There is much for rivals to envy about an industry that has flourished in recent years, helped by investments from Netflix, Amazon Studios and other streaming services. Hollywood has made a second home in the UK, built on the country’s creative history, actors and technicians, and special effects expertise. Pinewood’s 007 stage for James Bond films is one of many assets.
Los Angeles has a creative cluster, extending to a “30-mile zone” within which productions are considered to be local. The counterpart that has grown up in London and the south-east comprises 70 per cent of the UK’s film and television studio space. It has similar advantages in being able to assemble an array of talent fast and flexibly.
But many studios are located near the greenbelt around London, which is fiercely defended by residents and planners, even when it includes a former quarry. Joy Morrissey, the local Conservative MP before the election, argued against both the Marlow studios and Pinewood’s expansion plans. When national priorities meet local sensitivities, the latter often triumph.
Changing this is one of Labour’s priorities. Its manifesto this week promised to back creative industries and said the planning regime “acts as a major brake on economic growth”. Labour would not be bedevilled by the same internal tensions as the Conservatives in towns such as Marlow, but pledging radical reform and effecting it are different things.
The absence of a new studio lot at Marlow is not an immediate crisis for UK film and television. Inward investment fell last year as streaming services retreated from “peak TV” and some stages built in expectation of short-term growth are empty. One studio in Berkshire went into administration in April after the writers’ and actors’ strikes.
But as James Cameron said in supporting the plan, seizing the long-term opportunity requires “boldness in thinking”. There is not much point in providing tax incentives for new film and television production if you do not create the infrastructure to make it flourish. That not only involves studios but training more technicians and offering apprenticeships.
The UK has unusual advantages in enticing productions to leave Hollywood and cross the Atlantic. “It is not as if we can now pick and choose” among other inward investors, Robert Laycock, Marlow Film Studios’ chief executive, observed to me. Residents of towns such as Marlow should reflect before spurning this prize.
