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Awaiting outline planning permission in 2025. Project stalled in 2026.
image thanks to Denham Film Campus
In May and August 2022 consultations were carried out between members and officers of Buckinghamshire Council and a company keen to build some film studios near Denham. Denham of course is famous for its old film studios that in their day were considered by some to be the best in the country. They operated between 1936 and 1952. The stages and most of the supporting facilities were demolished and the land is now occupied by housing. There was one building remaining – the famous Denham Film Laboratories – and this too has been repurposed into very smart apartments.
However, the land concerned here is to the west of Denham – in fact it is on the other side of the M40/M25 junction from Pinewood. Between the 1950s and 1990s the site was used for sand and gravel extraction to build the motorways and was then used for landfill. It now has a thin layer of soil on it so is no use for agricultural purposes. However, it is currently designated green belt. In that regard it is similar to the land upon which Marlow Film Studios are to be constructed. Those studios were given planning permission in November 2025 following a long process of applications and appeals.
image thanks to Denham Film Campus
The plans included up to 165,000 square metres of film production space, including 21 sound stages, workshops, offices and a backlot. Education spaces, hotel accommodation, a retail area, an energy centre and 2,500 car parking spaces were also proposed.
The London-based company concerned is UK Wealth Holdings Development, who are owned by Hong Kong-based Zhongfei Gu. They are working in partnership with The Studio Group, who have led on the design, construction and operation of more than 3 million square feet of film studios worldwide. They held local consultations in September 2023 and applied for outline planning permission in October 2023. When I looked in November 2025, the council’s planning website had a number of documents and letters from various organisations that had been submitted through 2024 and well into 2025. It has to be said that several were against this project going ahead, for various reasons. For example, the proposed studios’ proximity to Denham Aerodrome seemed to be problematic on safety grounds and National Highways appeared to have some concerns regarding traffic.
My understanding as of the summer of 2026 is that this project is on hold – please contact me if this is not the case. In fact, the studio’s website appears to have been taken down.
It is interesting to speculate whether this project will in fact proceed. (This now seems unlikely.) Planning permission was sought in the autumn of 2023, at the peak of the crisis in the industry caused by the American actors’ and writers’ strikes. They must have assumed that things would pick up again quickly afterwards but studios remained very quiet during 2024 and did not return to the 2022 level in 2025 or 2026. Various factors are blamed, including a reduction in the content spend from some of the streamers (e.g. Apple TV has halved its content budget). Several studio construction projects have been halted or cancelled including Sunset Waltham Cross, Ashford International, HOP Bedfordshire – and Pinewood has reduced its planned expansion from 21 stages to 5 – and only if a streamer books the new stages for several years. Meanwhile, in the north-east, Crown Works Studios with a proposed 19 sound stages lost its main financial backer in June 2025. That project is now back on course but with only 6 stages.
As well as the reduction in the rising rate of commissioning, other factors are in play including a huge increase in business rates for studios (despite some tax relief from the government) and very high construction costs. And yet, according to various research projects, the UK industry will still need more sound stages over the coming years if it is to keep up with demand. To that end, in 2025 Marlow and Sky Elstree North went to appeal against their respective negative planning decisions – Elstree North was passed in September and Marlow was given the go-ahead by the government in November.
So, when they are both open, that will be 28 new sound stages available at about the same time that Denham’s 21 stages would also become operational, if the project goes ahead. These in addition to the 14 new stages at Shepperton that became available in 2024, the 18 that also opened at Shadowbox Shinfield in 2024, the 12 that opened at Eastbrook Dagenham in 2025, with 11 new stages opening at Leavesden in 2026/27, 5 at Fairbanks in Borehamwood due in 2027, 6 more at the Gillette Building that have recently been given the green light and 8 in Camden Film Quarter. And these are just in the London area. Will the industry really need that many in 2028 and beyond? Nobody knows.