![CGI of Fairbanks Studio [UMC Architects]](https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/assets/news_articles/2025/09/1758268367_fairbanks-studios---credit-umc-architects--003-.jpg)
French funding company AXA IM Alts purchased part of BBC’s Elstree website in January 2024 for £70m. It has now won solution to grant consent for its redevelopment into a brand new movie and TV campus, which can be rebranded as Fairbanks Studios, after its former proprietor, Hollywood superstar Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
The proposals come with the transformation of present studios and ancillary areas into 266,000 sq feet of recent media campus for the TV and impartial movie business. The remainder 50% of the 16-acre website used to be just lately upgraded by way of the BBC, which occupies the website beneath a long-term hire, basically to movie its EastEnders cleaning soap opera.
Specialist movie and TV studio developer/operator Oxygen Studios has been appointed to advise at the venture, with building deliberate to start out later this 12 months.
The redevelopment, designed with an artwork deco frontage by way of UMC Architects, will greater than quadruple the level house to roughly 100,000 sq feet throughout 5 sound levels, ranging in measurement from 16,000 to 21,000 sq feet. The growth additionally provides new workshops, places of work, a café, base camp, backlot, and stepped forward cycle and parking amenities. A brand new ‘media hub’ will be offering 58,000 sq feet of place of business and amenity areas throughout 5 storeys, for media-related industries and companies immediately attached to the studios.
Rob Samuel, head of UK building at AXA IM Alts, stated: “Those studios have performed crucial position within the established order and evolution of the United Kingdom TV and picture business for over a century, for the reason that Neptune Movie Corporate first opened its doorways in 1914. We’re proud to be shifting ahead with the redevelopment, proceeding that legacy by way of turning in cutting-edge studios that may make stronger the expansion of Britain’s inventive sector and convey lasting advantages to the native house thru employment alternatives, architectural difference and sustainable design. Our rebranding of the website to ‘Fairbanks Studios’ can pay homage to the campus’s heritage whilst permitting us to ship a transparent sign to the manufacturing corporations that there’s a cutting-edge new facility to be had to be used.”
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