London's Twickenham Studios to Open Major Film, TV Facility in Liverpool

The 8,000-square-meter space will be housed in a huge art deco building.

Twickenham Studios, the London-based facility that has been home to classics such as Blade Runner and, most recently, Black Mirror and McMafia, is to open an outpost in the U.K. city of Liverpool.

The 8,000-square-meter space — announced Thursday — is a $67 million project that will be housed in a huge art deco building famed for once being the headquarters for the Littlewoods chain of department stores. It has been empty since the 1990s. Property developer Capital & Centric will build two 2,000-square-meter soundstages on the site of an old bus station.

Liverpool has recently provided the backdrop to such films and TV shows as Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Peaky Blinders and the upcoming J.R.R Tolkien biopic, Tolkien.

"Liverpool’s architecture, accessibility and can-do attitude sees filmmakers return to the city time and time again," said Maria Walker, COO of Twickenham Studios. “With the added benefit of our studios, they’ll have access to gold-standard interior facilities right on the doorstep of unique exterior locations. It will be great to see Liverpool become an international focal point for TV and film."

The news comes just months after new figures from the British Film Institute showed that 2017 had been another all-time high for the U.K.'s growing production industry, with inward investment in film jumping to $2.4 billion and high-end TV investment hitting $967 million.