Fox Plans $1.5B Studio Expansion in Los Angeles

Fox Corp. is reaching back to the century-old roots of Twentieth Century Fox—the legendary Hollywood film backlot that opened in 1928 and evolved in 1957 into what was then a state-of-the-art film production complex in Century City—for the location of what it is calling Fox Future.

“The FOX Studio Lot, one of the most iconic and treasured production locations in the history of entertainment, is a rich part of our history,” said Lachlan Murdoch, Executive Chair and CEO, Fox Corp., in a statement. “The FOX FUTURE project represents a long-term commitment to our industry, to our community, and to the City of Los Angeles.”

The $1.5B SF Fox Future expansion at Century City will add nine new sound stages, bringing the total at the lot to 24. The project will include a 24-story media campus office building on Olympic Boulevard; the office tower will focus on creating collaborative open spaces and shared as well as private offices, all designed specifically for film and television production, the company said.

Fox is pledging to use renewable and recycled building materials, expand solar infrastructure at the studio and reduce water consumption. The media giant’s current footprint at the 50-acre Century City complex encompasses an estimated 2M SF.

In its statement announcing the Fox Future development, Fox said it may seek a development partner to transform the northeast portion of the Lot along Avenue of the Stars into a 35-story office tower with 28 floors of offices sitting on top of a seven-story parking facility providing access to the much-anticipated Metro D-line.

Fox said it is updating its Historic Preservation Plan for the century-old studio site: the company will relocate four historically significant structures to new locations on the lot. Fox also will preserve the legendary Fox Lot Commissary, home to a 1935 mural depicting Will Rogers.

The explosive demand for film production space to meet the voracious appetite of streaming companies for content has fueled a surge in studio production in the past year in the traditional film capitals of Hollywood and New York, as well as leading hubs in Georgia and New Jersey.

Earlier this month, Los Angeles-based Hackman Capital Partners announced another expansion of its bulging film and TV production portfolio, now worth more than $8B.

Hackman announced a $1B redevelopment of the Radford production lot formerly owned by ViacomCBS. The company said it is planning to build 25 soundstages encompassing 2.2M SF on the lot at 4024 Radford Avenue, as well as 1.4M SF of associated office space.

Hackman bought the Radford Ave. studio, then encompassing 18 soundstages and 210K SF of offices, in 2021 in a $1.85B sale-leaseback deal with ViacomCBS, which continues to use the studio for two of its local broadcast affiliates in Los Angeles, KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV.