Prominent Toronto real estate developer Castlepoint Development has confirmed it is teaming up with Pinewood Studios Group of London on a yet-to-be-built studio complex in Toronto’s west end.

Alfredo Romano, a principal of Castlepoint Development, tells Playback Daily that a newly formed joint venture with Pinewood, Castlepoint Studio Partners, intends to open a 100,000-square-foot, five-soundstage studio just north of Bloor Street and Lansdowne Avenue by fall 2008.

The proposed five soundstages from Castlepoint/Pinewood, added to the seven new stages due to open by March 2008 at the FilmPort megastudio now being constructed cross-town by Toronto Film Studios, should go some ways to getting Toronto into the big-budget Hollywood movie shooting game alongside Vancouver and Montreal.

As things stand, however, the project is still on the drawing board, and Castlepoint and Pinewood are currently doing due diligence.

But Romano says 2.3 hectares of land on the midtown Toronto site has already been purchased and zoned for a studio development. Securing permits and other permissions from the city should be no problem, nor should ratification for the project from the Pinewood board, he adds.

Toronto newest high-end movie studio will have two large stages, each likely in the 28,000- to 32,000-square-foot range, dwarfing the remaining three stages planned. Besides the 100,000 square feet of overall new studio space, Castlepoint also intends to locate offices and workshops in another 150,000 square feet of existing building space on the midtown Toronto site, which will need to be refurbished.

Romano says Pinewood, which is partly owned by British film directors Ridley Scott and brother Tony, will be an equity partner in the proposed Toronto studio.

Romano would not comment on whether the Scott brothers might shift their own movie shoots from their British operation to Toronto, or steer other foreign producers here.

But he does insist Pinewood is looking to the Toronto studio as a ‘foothold into the North American market.’

Romano and Pinewood, in an earlier partnership, failed in 2004 to secure permission from the City of Toronto to build a megastudio on Toronto’s waterfront. The winning bidder in that contest was Toronto Films Studios.

Despite that setback, Romano says operating a Toronto film studio remained a viable proposition.

‘The [2004] bid went to someone else. But we still feel that there is a need and a market [in Toronto],’ he says.