Italy’s Fremantle-owned Lux Vide production powerhouse is expanding its in-house studio capacity, unveiling a large new soundstage on Monday at its facilities in Formello outside Rome which will become a major new European physical production hub.
Plans are underway for a total of seven state-of-the-art stages, plus a new post-production facility to be in place at Formello by year’s end creating a sprawling Lux Video studio area on more than 6,500 square meters of space (2,5 square miles) including the backlot.
Lux Vide’s new Teatro 5 measuring more than 1150 square meters (more than 12,000 square feet) was inaugurated with Italy’s deputy culture minister Lucia Bergonzoni and other local authorities on hand alongside Lux CEO Luca Bernabei, Andrea Scrosati, Fremantle’s group COO and CEO continental Europe, and Lux’s honorary president Matilde Bernabei.
The studios will be used mainly by Lux Vide and Fremantle sister companies, which comprise Wildside and The Apartment in Italy. But they will also be offered for rental to external companies.
Lux’s new expanded studio facilities, which tapped into Italy’s tax credit incentives for production, involved a more than €6 million ($6.4 million) investment. The studios employs on average 250 people a day, according to a statement.
The new studio, like all Lux Vide soundstages, is built according to an eco-friendly protocol so that roughy 40% of the energy requirements will be generated through solar electricity panels, while the facility will use electric vehicles to make for more sustainable productions.
“I congratulate Lux Vide for this new important project that has been a great public and private demonstration by sharing the same strategic vision, and working side by side to achieve a common goal: the strengthening of the TV & film industry, being an engine for cultural and economic growth of our country, as well as its attractiveness on an international scale,” said Italy’s deputy culture minister Bergonzoni during the inauguration.
Lux Vide CEO Bernabei noted that “Businesses, like production companies, day after day, need a ‘factory’. My hope is that Studio 5 can be the place where the ideas of our creatives can take shape and substance.”
Fremantle’s Scrosati pointed out that “Lux Vide’s qualities include combining craftsmanship with an international industrial model” and called Lux “An ambitious company that, from today, has a new ‘home’ where cutting-edge and competitive equipment and technologies will be at the service of creativity.”
