Hot Spots: Inside Space Studios Manchester, The High-End Production Facility That Has Housed ‘Morbius’, ‘Peaky Blinders’, ‘The Crown’ & More

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When Manchester’s city council made a strategic decision back in 2013 to improve the infrastructure of its creative industries, it decided to put its money into bricks and mortar with the construction of the £35M ($42.7M) Space Studios Manchester.

The purpose-built facility for high-end TV, film and commercial production, which sits in West Gorton, Manchester, features more than 85,000 square feet of sound stages and has housed high-end TV drama ranging from BBC’s Peaky Blinders to season 4 of The Crown to, most recently, Sony/Marvel’s Morbius.The studio currently boasts six sound stages: one sitting at 30,000 square feet, four stages at 11,500 and a sixth of 9,000 square feet.

The one-stop shop has purpose-built dressing and makeup facilities, production offices ranging from 409 square feet to 1,851 square feet a 25,000 square foot prop storage/workshop.

What’s more, in a bid to meet the steady demand for space, the city council recently granted the studio planning permission for two new sound stages of 20,000 square feet each, taking the total sound stage space to more than 100,000 square feet.“We’re just now finalizing the design and costing part of the plan with a hope to start construction sometime in Q4 this year,” says Space Studios managing director Rob Page. “We’re expecting a build time of between 12-16 months.”It’s a quick turnaround for the project which, he says, will cost anywhere from £18M ($22M) to £22M ($27M), and is a direct response to the steady demand it’s having now.“We are still very much being booked two or three months ahead,” says Space Studios sales director Mark Hackett. “So, we have current availability from January, but we don’t feel too distressed about that because we know that a