During lockdown, the brilliant writer Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) agreed to write a script for our drama series, A Thousand Blows, starring Stephen Graham. The Disney+ Original series takes place in the gritty world of London’s underground bare-knuckle boxing scene in the 1880s. This period, for all its blood, gore and hard living was a transformative time for London, positioning it as the absolute crossroads of the world.
In recent years, the UK has transformed once again, becoming the epicentre of the world of film and television production. As well as the numerous television series already being produced in the UK, mega-budget Hollywood franchises like James Bond, Mission Impossible, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings have also chosen to shoot here.
Stars want to work here and many of them even want to live here — I have recently heard people jokingly call it “Hollywood on Thames”. London already boasts world-renowned studios; beloved by all and dripping in film history. However, large-scale productions have always lacked a central London studio… until now.
I follow these trends closely as one of the co-founders of a new studio at Mortlake Brewery, in South-West London. Our studio, The Story Works, sits between Richmond-upon-Thames and Putney on the South bank of the river. On this 22-acre historic Victorian Brewery site, we have built two soundstages which are now open to other productions to make their shows after having successfully hosted A Thousand Blows.
I have been producing TV drama most of my life, but rarely, if ever, have I shot a series in London
We have just agreed a long-term lease for the site, and we now have plans to build on our successes so far and turn this corner of London into a new media village and a vibrant hub of production and culture.
I have been producing TV drama most of my life, but rarely, if ever, have I shot a series in London. Shows will shoot a day here and there at suitable locations across the city, but mainly we Easyjet our way back and forth to more viable filming destinations abroad in places like Budapest, Dublin, Morocco, Australia and Vancouver… basically anywhere but London!
The UK has some of the best crews and talent in the world which underpins our strength as a producing nation. We also now have great government support and some of the best financial incentives in the world to help attract producers to work here. The tides are changing, London is reaffirming itself globally as a cultural hub and production powerhouse.
It has been reported that Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series recently moved from New Zealand to Shepperton Studios, and Greta Gerwig (the genius Director of Barbie) is set to film The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for Netflix in the UK sometime soon. It is wonderful that these literary national treasures are now being produced here on home soil, not least because each new project creates hundreds of jobs and is huge boosts for the national economy.
The Story Works has the space required within the brewery walls to build a project of almost any scale. It’s exciting the possibility of bringing such projects to heart of London. We have the room at the studio to place all crafts together side by side, encouraging a collaborative creative spirit and hopefully raising the game fostering craft excellence for everyone involved.
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The Old Brewery has a thousand-year history of production tracing brewing back to 1089. The site has since housed constant activity: a world-famous tapestry works, a pottery works and the seat of power for Thomas Cromwell during the reign of Henry VIII. With such a rich history, it's feels like the perfect home for London’s new local studios. Next week, the 77th Cannes Film Festival gets underway and as the worlds’ leading film makers head towards France, many will stop off for meetings in London but this time there’s a new stop off point to add into their busy schedules — The Story Works, here in “Hollywood-on-Thames”.
Simon Vaughan is a film and television producer