Lights! Camera! Inaction!

Dream on…

hen it was announced back in July 2020 that Greystones was about to get its very own film and TV studio, everybody here was very excited and ridiculously delighted.

The one reaction people didn’t greet the news with though was surprise.

Sure, isn’t Wicklow the greatest 500,900-acre film lot Ireland has to offer, with easy access to rolling hills, waterfalls, castles, John Hinde villages, good-looking extras and top-o’the-mornin’ pub grub?

And all just 35 minutes down the big road from Dublin airport.

The location earmarked – and subsequently fenced off – are the big fields sandwiched between the Woodlands estates and the abandoned Charlesland Golf Club on one side, and Shoreline on up almost to the Charlesland estates on the other. This near-50 acre site of unused IDA land would house the Greystones Media Campus, boasting 14 studios, offices and ancillary buildings that would, it was predicted, provide 300 full-time jobs and up to 1,200 jobs for those freelancers in the film, media and broadcasting sectors.

And to add to all that happy, there would be a further 850 jobs created during the construction phase.

Only, after an initial flurry of fencing and the clearing of a few hedges, the construction phase came to a halt. And shortly after, the Portacabins were uprooted and removed.

That was six months ago. At least. No one wrote down the date everyone abandoned the site because no one was expecting such a move.

Talk of some ancient bones putting a stop to any digging proved redundant, given that the site has been idle for so long.

So, given that the first phase was supposed to be finished mid-2024, we’ve been trying to get to the bottom of the hiatus for quite some weeks now, and each avenue of enquiry has led to a dead end, with some who haven’t a clue about what’s going on, or others who’d simply rather not say.

In regard to the latter, after over a week of back and forth with Irish PR Danny Hanley, senior account manager with Káno Communications, the American developers Hackman Capital Partners and its partner, Square Mile Capital Management, finally came back with a no comment.

Pushing their PR man on what that actually meant, he reassured us that everything was still going ahead as planned. So, why didn’t Hackman Capital Partners and its partner, Square Mile Capital Management, just state that?

Emailing those on the Irish side of the development proved just as tricky, with no one we contacted in Wicklow County Council willing or able to let us now what the current state of play was, and local councillors also drawing a blank as they sent requests for further information up the pipeline.

One promising lead cropped up just before Christmas, when Stephen Donnelly’s righthand man, Galen, said he should have some information from insiders about work recommencing in the new year. “We worked with them re: contract discussions with the IDA,” said Galen on December 5th. “They are having a meeting with their partners about getting things going again…”

Not entirely sure who they are in this scenario – the proposed development is being supported by the sovereign development fund, Capwell, a SISK Family company, and Conor Harrington, an independent TV and film producer – but, at last, we were going to get some definite word on the Greystones Media Campus.

Only, word came there none, even though we kept knocking on that door. “They are not getting back to me,” Galen informed us today, “so, read into that what you will.”

When we pushed to know who wasn’t getting back to him, Galen said he’d go check if he was allowed to say. That was at 3.50pm today.

In keeping with our Deep Throat investigation, a local film industry player has his own theory as to the film campus limbo.

“I think that the writers and actors strikes in the US have hit the parent company very hard,” he offers. “There’s a feeling in the industry here that they have pressed pause on the Greystones project until the dust has settled and they have recovered sufficiently to plow their investors’ money into the Wicklow turf.

“I know from people in LA that the strike turned the place into a something akin to a Walking Dead set…”

Welcome to our world. If anyone out there reading this does know what the frick is happening with the Greystones Media Campus, you can email us here. Or we can meet you at The Whale underground car park at midnight.

In the meantime, you can chart that campus progress from Disney+ to Disney- here, and go check out Hollywood’s flirtations with Greystones over the past 100 years here.