Pinewood M'sia to be ready by May 2013

By PAULINE NG

IN KUALA LUMPUR

FOLLOWING a delay of more than a year, RM309 million (S$125 million) integrated media studios facility Pinewood Iskandar Malaysia Studios will be completed by May 2013.

In a filing to the stock exchange yesterday, construction company Sunway Bhd said one of its wholly- owned units, Sunway Construction Sdn Bhd, had accepted the letter of award for the building of the integrated media studios facility in Johor over a 19-month construction period. The target completion for the project is May 10, 2013.

Under a strategic agreement entered into with Pinewood Shepperton plc in December 2009, Khazanah Nasional will develop the studios which will provide more than 100,000 square feet of film stages ranging from 12,000-30,000 sq ft, and nearly 60,000 sq ft of TV studios, a number of offices, workshops and post- production facilities.

Then, the UK company had said the new studios would provide it with 'a presence in the heart of Asia'. 'Malaysia's excellent digital connections, low- cost base and proximity to Singapore mean that Pinewood Malaysia Studios will be ideally placed as the creative hub of the region.'

CEO Ivan Dunleavy had also observed the new studios would allow the company, which will get consultancy and brand licence fees for sales and marketing services, 'to build a meaningful new revenue stream, exploiting our expertise and brand internationally'.

In any event, the Malaysian sovereign fund views the creative sector as having the potential to move employment up the value chain and is one of six service-based areas accorded tax and employment incentives by the government to attract companies to set up in the special economic zone. The other services areas are education, financial advisory and consulting, healthcare, logistics, and tourism.

Even so, only a handful of companies have responded, most preferring to wait and watch Iskandar's development before committing.

Since its launch in the last quarter of 2006, the development of the zone (which stretches over some 2,200 sq km) has been slower than anticipated, in part because of the 2008 Dubai financial crisis. Pinewood Iskandar, for example, was initially scheduled to be completed by end-2012.

Malaysia's natural attractions - tropical rainforests, mountains and beaches - will offer film locations that are very different from Pinewood's five other studios in the UK, Canada, Dominican Republic, Los Angeles and Germany.

But animation is another area of interest and it received a boost from the recent nomination of Saladin for an award at the Emmys. Nearly all the production crew in the 13-part TV series - co-produced by government agency Multimedia Development Corporation and Qatar's Al-Jazeera Children's Channel - were Malaysians.

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/news/story/0,4574,460057-1318535940,00.html?