And while it’s certainly common in the industry to shoot in a different place from where a show is set, will moving the production of “Run the World” and other programs set in New York City to Westchester County be a snub to the Big Apple.
In the latter category, Wildflower Studios in Astoria, Queens — a project Robert De Niro is a partner in — will have 11 soundstages when it is completed next year.
For Lionsgate, which owns Starz, the new Yonkers facility offers “certainty,” said Kevin Beggs, the chair of Lionsgate Television.“We don’t have to spend six weeks canvassing the city of New York and environs” for locations, he said.
The three completed soundstages are already spoken for, although there is some office space still vacant, said Mr.Mediapro, a Spanish-language content provider, has claimed at least one of the soundstages being built this year.
Halmi said he hoped to break ground on the soundstages before the end of the year, but the $52.5 million site will need to be rezoned first.
Spano has been trying to get Yonkers into the movie business since he was elected mayor in 2012, and learned from the state’s film office about the “list of things we were doing wrong,” he said.
Soon the city had a film office that movie companies dealt directly with and was hosting “hundreds of days” of film shoots every year.As for “Run the World,” which began moving in sets this week, the studio work in Yonkers does not represent a loss for New York City; production for the first season was done at a studio on Long Island.