Liverpool’s delayed film and TV complex, Littlewoods Studios, has received a £20m investment boost from the government as announced in the UK chancellor’s budget earlier this week.
A Liverpool local authority spokesperson said construction is expected to begin “within 12 months”. However, the project has faced several setbacks.
Littlewoods Studios has been in discussion since 2017 as a 85,000-sq-ft production and post-production facility. UK property developer Capital & Centric was partnering with Twickenham Studios to turn the Art Deco Littlewoods Building into what had been billed as the ‘Hollywood of the North’. It has now emerged that Twickenham Studios has pulled out of the build.
Concerns have been raised within local government for several years about the project’s financial risks. It is not known when or why exactly Twickenham Studios pulled out of the studios, but according to the BBC, Twickenham said it was still committed to the project as of 2024.
Southwest London-based Twickenham Studios has housed productions including War Horse, The Iron Lady and post-production for Klara And The Sun and Netflix series Enola Holmes.
The £20m investment comes from the government’s Growth Mission Fund, and is subject to final business case approval. It falls short of the £50m that Liverpool City Region mayor Steve Rotheram said was needed earlier this year.
The studios will form part of a wider creative complex planned for the Littlewoods site, with facilities also for music, gaming and AI.
Projects to recently shoot in Liverpool include Warner Bros’ The Batman Part II and Clayface, Sony’s The Beatles four-part film biopic, BBC series This City Is Ours and Babak Jalali’s A Town In Nova Scotia.
“Demand for space at Littlewoods has never been the problem, we still have lots of interest from occupiers and we could have let the buildings three or four times over,” said a spokesperson from Capital & Centric. “The issue has always been providing certainty around completion timescales for them, so the £20m grant is a huge step in the right direction towards being able to do that.”
Screen has contacted Twickenham Studios for comment.
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