Bell Media Eyes Selling Controlling Stake in Pinewood Toronto Studios (Exclusive)

Etan Vlessing
·2 min read
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Pinewood Toronto Studios majority owner Bell Media is looking to possibly sell its stake in the marquee studio where the Star Trek: Discovery series and Guillermo del Toro shoot.

Executives at the Canadian media giant, a subsidiary of phone giant BCE Inc., were not available for comment. But The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed with possible bidders on the controlling interest, who wished to remain anonymous, that an informal sales process is underway.

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A potential sale of the controlling stake in the Toronto studio comes as real estate developers and equity funds place increasing bets on Hollywood continuing to film movies and TV series in Canada. At Pinewood Toronto Studios, Netflix has a long term lease on four soundstages and adjacent offices for around 84,580 square feet of production space.

In 2020, Bell Media added to its controlling interest by buying a minority stake from property developer Alfredo Romano’s Castlepoint Numa. That followed the media subsidiary of BCE acquiring a 45 percent stake in the megastudio from pension fund ROI Capital, and picking up additional shares from the remaining three co-owners – Comweb Studios Holdings, Castlepoint Realty Partners and the city of Toronto – to secure a majority stake in studio facility in 2018.

But those deals were done under former Bell Media president Randy Lennox, who stepped down and was replaced by Wade Oosterman as head of the media player in early 2021. To meet an anticipated surge in American film and TV production post-pandemic, Pinewood Toronto Studios is adding more soundstages after shoots for TV series like Star Trek: Discovery and movies like Molly’s Game, Suicide Squad and Guillermo del Toro’s monster epic Pacific Rim.

Los Angeles producers covet tax credits and currency savings when coming north to shoot on soundstages in Toronto. A possible sale of the majority stake in Pinewood Toronto Studios also comes amid a fast-changing studio business in the city.

Rival Cinespace Studios was acquired by TPG Real Estate Partners for $1.1 billion. The asset firm purchased Cinespace studio campuses in Toronto and Chicago that are home to production of major films and TV series like Dick Wolf’s Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med, Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy and MGM’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Cinespace also acquired Germany’s Studio Babelsberg to operate under its umbrella.

And MBS Group, a Hackman Capital Partners company, is currently developing two ambitious new projects: Basin Media Campus, a $250 million purpose-built film studio on Toronto’s waterfront, and the roughly $200 million Downsview Studios, which will offer an initial eight soundstages, followed by additional studio space in the form of converted airplane hangars at the adjacent Downsview air base as part a wider 370-acre redevelopment project.

Ontario currently has about 3.7 million square feet of studio space, and that is expected to grow to 5.7 million square feet in four years.

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