Pinewood Toronto Studios majority owner Bell Media may want to sell its stake in the marquee tent studio where the Star Trek Discovery series and Guillermo del Toro shooting.
Managers at the Canadian media giant, a subsidiary of the telephone giant BCE Inc., were not available for comment. But The Hollywood Reporter confirmed with potential bidders on the controlling interest, wishing to remain anonymous, that an informal sale process is underway.
A potential sale of the controlling stake in the Toronto studio comes as real estate developers and equity funds place increasing bets that Hollywood will continue to film movies and TV series in Canada. At Pinewood Toronto Studios, Netflix has a long-term lease on four sound stage and adjoining offices for approximately 84,580 square feet of production space.
In 2020, Bell Media contributed its controlling interest by buying a minority stake in real estate developer Alfredo Romano’s Castlepoint Numa. This followed the median subsidiary of BCE, which acquired a 45 per cent stake in the mega-studio of pension fund ROI Capital, and acquired additional shares from the remaining three co-owners – Comweb Studios Holdings, Castlepoint Realty Partners and the city of Toronto. has a majority stake in study facility in 2018.
But those deals were done under former Bell Media president Randy Lennox, who retired in early 2021 and was replaced by Wade Oosterman as the retired head of the media player. To meet an expected increase in U.S. film and TV production post-pandemic, Pinewood Toronto Studios adds more audio stories to recordings for TV series such as Star Trek Discovery and movies like Molly’s Game, Suicide Squad in Guillermo del Toro’s Monster Epic Pacific ocean edge.
Los Angeles producers crave tax credits and currency savings when they come north to shoot on sound stages in Toronto. A possible sale of the majority stake in Pinewood Toronto Studios also comes amid a rapidly changing studio business in the city.
Rival Cinespace Studios was acquired by TPG Real Estate Partners for $ 1.1 billion. The asset firm has bought Cinespace studio campuses in Toronto and Chicago that are home to the production of major films and TV series such as Dick Wolf’s Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago MedNetflix The Umbrella Academyat MGM’s The Maid’s Story. Cinespace also acquired Germany’s Studio Babelsberg to operate under its umbrella.
And MBS Group, a Hackman Capital Partners company, is currently developing two ambitious new projects: Basin Media Campus, a $ 250 million purpose-built film studio on Toronto’s waterfront, and the approximately $ 200 million Downsview Studios, which has a will provide an initial eight sound stage, followed by additional studio space in the form of converted aircraft sheds at the adjacent Downsview Air Base as part of a 370-acre wider redevelopment project.
Ontario currently has approximately 3.7 million square feet of studio space, and it is expected to grow to 5.7 million square feet over four years.