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The first time film-maker Barnaby Thompson visited Ealing Studios it was to shoot Victoria Beckham, who at the time was better known globally as Posh Spice, being unceremoniously plunged underwater.
“It was 1997, we were making Spice World and there was a sequence where Posh Spice got thrown into the Thames,” says Thompson, whose film credits include Wayne’s World, the remake of St Trinian’s and an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. “We have a tank at Ealing so we shot Posh being thrown into the tank. It was the first time I had been on that hallowed ground.”
Nearly three decades on, the film director and producer is a co-owner of the studios and is about to raise the curtain on its biggest revamp in 80 years.
Thompson has something of an obsession with the west London site, which was founded in 1902, and is the world’s oldest continuously working studio facility for film production. Three years after Beckham’s dip, he jumped at the chance to form part of a consortium to buy the storied complex for a reported £10m.
Between the late 1930s and mid-50s, the studio produced famous Ealing comedies such as the Lavender Hill Mob, and postwar hits including The Ladykillers and Kind Hearts and Coronets.
Under subsequent BBC ownership, classics including Porridge, Monty Python and Doctor Who were shot there.
But by 2000, when Thompson took over in concert with the Manhattan Loft Corporation, the property group behind the Chiltern Firehouse and St Pancras Renaissance hotel, the ageing studios were struggling to compete against modern rivals.
“I grew up with the Ealing movies, it was a fabulous fantasy to own the studio,” he says. “Then one thing after another happened and suddenly we owned it. The place was charming but somewhat dilapidated. It needed to be modernised and brought into the 21st century. No one had spent any money on it since the war.”
Since then, Thompson has managed several phases of development, and productions including Downton Abbey, Darkest Hour and the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black have shot there. But to complete his dream revamp he needed more investment.
In 2022, the US private equity firm Starwood Capital took a majority stake in the studios for £48.5m – and a £20m expansion plan was subsequently announced.
Later this month, Thompson will receive the official handover from the construction team, a moment that will mark the realisation of a quarter-of-a-century labour of love.
“When we brought it [Ealing], what we dreamed of doing was to make a studio that had all this history, the old stages built in the 1930s and the heritage since 1902, but also have the most modern facilities,” he says. “It needed to be absolutely fit for the 21st century. And I think that is what we are completing this month.”
With the overhaul, the studio has added a new 1,300 sq metre (14,000 sq ft) stage, increasing the overall amount of sound stage space by 60% to 3,437 sq metres, as well as new production offices.
Nestled in the back streets of the west London suburb, it lacks the scale of its out-of-town rivals including Pinewood and Shepperton, but has the benefits of fast links to Heathrow airport and central London.
“The Elizabeth line has made an enormous difference,” says Thompson. “It takes 10 minutes to get to Bond Street and east London is just 25 minutes. We are so accessible, and if productions are looking at sustainability taking the tube rather than driving is such a do-able thing.”
However, the official reopening comes against a vastly different TV and film production landscape than when Ealing closed its doors to outside productions.
The 18-month construction project – officially Ealing was still running as it is also the home of MetFilm school, which kept its doors open – covered a period of immense change and upheaval.
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The closure encompassed the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes; the end of so-called “peak TV”, the big-budget production bonanza fuelled by US streamers such as Netflix; and UK domestic broadcasters including the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV significantly cutting back on commissioning.
The number of films produced in the UK plunged from a post-pandemic-fuelled high of 420 in 2022 to 191 last year, according to figures from the British Film Institute. The number of premium TV shows costing at least £1m an hour to make fell from 248 to 191 in the same period.
Overall, the UK market for film and high-end TV production shrank by £2bn between 2022 and 2024, although most of this was in the television sector.
“In terms of timing we were fortunate to have chosen to be closed during the strikes,” says Thompson. “I think the strikes brought on a day of reckoning. The streamers had come in and a lot of shows were being made for too much money. The strikes and subsequent slowdown have caused problems for the whole industry.”
The figures from the BFI showed that last year was better than 2023, but Thompson believes the market will not return to the peaks of recent years. As for Ealing, he says the studio is booked up until at least the middle of next year.
“It is levelling out, production is picking up but I don’t think it will go back to the same levels as before,” he says. “There is enough demand but there isn’t that streamer hysteria we had before, I don’t think [as many] budgets will be at the same level as before.”
Last year, the government announced an enhanced tax credit for independent film productions costing up to £15m, to support a sector that has produced lower-budget movies such as The King’s Speech, The Full Monty and Slumdog Millionaire.
Thompson welcomed the move, saying: “I have spent most of my life making very British films and it is getting harder and harder to finance them. The tax break will help fill that gap.”
Ealing Studios reported a £2m pre-tax loss in its most recent public accounts for 2023, with rental income of £3m. This followed a £3.3m loss in 2022, when rental income was £5.6m.
In the pre-Covid years of 2019 and 2018, the studio complex generated about £5m in rental income and made under £1m in annual profits.
Thompson, who is shooting a four-part thriller for Amazon in the south of France, says he feels lucky to have been able to continue the Ealing Studios story for the next generation.
“I’m very proud of it and all we have done there,” the 65-year-old says. “It has obviously been my life for 25 years. But I’m a film-maker first and guardian of the studio second. It is an amazing place, so much a part of the British heritage and character that it would be foolish to think it ever really belonged to me.”
