Wicklow County Council has granted ten-year planning permission to Greystones Media Campus Ltd for a “state of the art” multi-studio film and media campus in the coastal town of Greystones. The investment, amounting to €150 million, will back the building of a 73,511 m² studio space, alongside offices and ancillary production buildings constructed on the 50-acre site at the IDA Business and Technology Park at Greystones. The completion of the project will result in the stage capacity of the Emerald Isle's audiovisual industry being doubled. The economic impact, valued at €1.54 billion gross, will contribute to creating over 1,500 new jobs and will represent a major boost for the small seaside resort and its surroundings.

Greystones Media Campus Ltd is a 50/50 joint venture between builders John Sisk & Son Ltd and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), which is managed and controlled by state-owned debt agency the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA). The cover letter accompanying the project highlights that “the proposed development supports a quantum of scale designed to position the Dublin-Wicklow cluster within the film industry as a global hub for international investment and production” capable of epitomising “the government’s vision for the film industry”.

The campus will be the third major studio complex in the county, alongside Ardmore Studios and Ashford Studios, both home to prestigious international productions such as Vikings, Penny Dreadful, The Man Who Invented Christmas [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], Into the Badlands, The Tudors and many more. It will also aim to capitalise on the growing appetite for content exhibited by major streamers such as Amazon, Netflix, Disney, Hulu, HBO and Apple, which are currently attempting to find solutions to the global shortage of studio space.