GRAND BAHAMAS FILM STUDIO LOSES MAJOR DEAL
Any further government delay in approving the sale of Grand Bahama Film Studio may keep the facility from landing the kind of mega Hollywood production that has just gone to its chief competitor.
"Certainly, if we are given the approval to purchase the studio with the plans that are there, it has the potential to be productive and successful," said Owen Bethel, lead for a the group of businessmen trying to buy the studio, FilmInvest. "If we are not prepared, it will be a missed opportunity."
The studio, with a broken filming tank at its center, has just missed such a revenue-generating opportunity.
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The production crew is expected to pump as much as $60 million into the local economy over the course of the four-or five-month shooting schedule. That gargantuan effort is set to start in November and is focused on underwater and beach scenes.
It's the same kind of big box production the Gold Rock Creek facility in Grand Bahama was built to attract, although it has utterly failed to do so since the filming of Pirates of the Caribbean II and III in 2006. They, too, were Disney productions, suggesting the Bahamian facility could well have had an inside track in winning the third in the Narnia series. That's only if its tank was fixed and other key investments in the property made.
The sequel of a CS Lewis Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe adaptation, it is now in theaters and has grossed more than $150 million since its May opening.
The danger for the GB studio is losing another Disney mega production in the offing, Pirates IV, which is close to winning final approval Guardian Business has learned.
"We are simply waiting on the government to indicate the intent of the current position of the studio," Bethel told Guardian Business. His group has pledged to pump millions into rehabilitating the tank as well as the rest of the facility. It has also indicated it will develop a film-related theme park to piggyback off the facility and better tie it into the faltering local tourism industry.
Here again, its Mexican competitor has already made substantial ground.
The Xploration theme park, built by 20th Century Fox in 1996 for the filming of Titanic, is now open five days a week, attracting U.S. visitors looking to tour the facility where Master and Commander, Pearl Harbor and Tomorrow Never Dies were shot. The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader will be the next name added to that list.
Grand Bahama's list is much shorter, although a low-budget German production has just wrapped up its filming schedule there.
However, the state of the whole Bahamian filming industry this year has failed to meet expectations, unable to land the big movie shoots that pump tens of millions of dollars into the economy through goods and services leased and bought over the course of filming. The Bahamas has been limited to five relatively small productions for 2008, with schedules measured in days rather than weeks. The country's film commissioner Craig Woods would not peg an amount to the impact that work has had on the economy.
Still, that figure represents ground lost from 2006. Over the past four years, in fact, $70 million was pumped into the Bahamian economy by 10 international films. Of that number, Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean sequels accounted for around $43 million.
Part of the reason why The Bahamas is an ideal location for producers to shoot their films is because of the filming tank, which is usually used for water scenes.
That combined with the proximity to the U.S. and our English-speaking population lend the destination an edge over our Mexican competition, argues Bethel.
So goes the theory, at least. The current uncertainty surrounding the GB facility, however, has now creating a new reality where the Baja facility may ultimately attract the lion's share of work not only this year but going forward.
But the possibility of regaining success in the film industry all depends on the government. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham suggested his administration was not only considering revoking the license now held by the current owner, Gold Rock, but the take-back of some of the 1,000-acre parcel of land. It would then re-lease the remaining studio site to Bethel or another interested party.
Diminishing that land holding could alter Bethel's plans to follow Rosarito's lead with the development of GB's own theme park. It isn't clear how successful that particular end of the Mexican operation has been, however, specifically how many tourists come through its turnstiles each week.
It may be something the government will look into as it decides the fate of Grand Bahama's operation.
Still, local stakeholders are calling upon Ingraham to make that decision soon, in order to shore up a Freeport economy mired in the doldrums.
"Timing is critical," said Bethel on Friday. "The assessment needs to be made before the Disney movie comes along."