Four new studios and support facilities are under construction as part of the Hungarian National Film Institute’s largest ever publicly funded studio development in Fót.
The development, which will increase the capacity of the film production base in Fót fivefold, has hit the half-way mark and will include one of the largest film studios in Hungary, with a floor area of 4,945 sqm and a ceiling height of 18 meters.
“As a major economic factor, the Hungarian film industry employs nearly 20,000 professionals and brings significant benefits to the country, mainly in the form of foreign exchange earnings. With the rise of streaming content, film production spending has been growing steadily in recent years, and preliminary estimates suggest that spending in 2022 will increase by another 20%. The expansion of domestic studio capacity will provide a competitive advantage in the international environment and will also help to serve state-supported Hungarian productions, thus putting the Film Institute‘s public service activities in a new perspective,” says Csaba Káel, Government Commissioner for the Development of the Hungarian Film Industry and President of the National Film Institute.
Hungary has for years been the most sought-after film production center in Continental Europe. In 2022, several of the biggest studios and the most exciting stars, including Emma Stone, Mel Gibson, Hugh Laurie, Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Kate Winslet and Jude Law have continued to shoot in the country.
Major Expansion in Progress
The expansion of the studio complex will include the construction of four new film studios, adding a total of 9,890 sqm of usable floor space to the current 2,692 sqm of studio space, for a total of 12,582 sqm available for productions in Fót. An important qualitative feature of the development is that two of the four new studios can be connected to each other, providing a total of 5,000 sqm of space, which can be used for large-scale productions in parallel.
A representative reception building with a 40-seat projection screen will be built and, in addition to the new studios, the Fót site will be expanded with some 3,000 sqm of office space, catering units and 7,300 sqm of storage capacity to serve productions.
The overall development of the studio complex will make it an internationally and nationally significant film production site and will lower its operating costs. Construction works started last summer and is being carried out in several phases, with completion of the entire development planned for the first half of 2024.
In addition to a number of Hungarian films, the NFI Studio has recently been the location for such internationally popular films as “The King”, “The Witcher” and “The Last Kingdom”, and is currently hosting the filming of the major Hungarian series “Rise of the Raven”.
Cover credit: NFI
