Russia's Glavkino boasts largest sound stage in Eastern Europe

Russia’s newest production complex for film and television, Glavkino, is launching on a greenfield site outside of Moscow and boasts the largest single sound stage – with an area of 3,000 square metres – in the whole of Eastern Europe.

Glavkino’s CEO Ilya Bachurin explained that inthe complex’s first phase of construction, 12 sound stages were built with a total area of 12,000 sqm as well as state-of-the-art postproduction facilities – including 3D capabilities - over an area of 10,000 sqm.

Apart from the 3,000 sqm stage, there are three measuring 1,000 sqm, three at 500 sqm and several smaller ones for digital production.

In comparison, the legendary Mosfilm’s sound stages cover 10,362 sqm and St Petersburg-based Russian World Studios total7,000 sqm.

While this first stage involved an outlay of just over $100m, a second stage of development costing $120m will see administrative buildings and a hotel being built by the end of 2013, thus bringing the complex’s area up to 33,000 sqm and making it the largest facility in Russia.

According to Bachurin, the ratio of business occupying the stages will initially be weighted in favour of television (70%), with cinema projects delivering 30% of the business. However, “in a couple of years” this should pan out to a 50:50 split between productions for television and cinema.

At the same time, the Glavkino group of companies has its own in-house production division which already participated in the $16m action film August 8th by Dzhanik Fayziev. The film was released in Russian cinemas by Fox on 1,467 prints and has clocked up over $ 12m box-office to date. Fox also hold the world rights to August 8th.

Bachurin explained that another three feature projects are being lined up for production with Glavkino this year, one reportedly being an Estonian-Russian project by Russian prodicer Yelena Yatsura.

“We are also interested in attracting internationally major operating companies to come and use our facilities,” Bachurin said. “It is not our major goal to attract their money, because we are interested in attracting their experience and their specialists who can make Glavkino part of the international filmmaking industry.”

The studio’s first client was Comedy Club Production (CCP) which recorded the TV show Comedy Battle there in April.

Meanwhile, Bachurin pointed that the studio also has a large educational programmme based at Glavkino called Kino Campus which will invite leading international experts in the fields of directing, cinematography and screenwriting as well and screenwriters as well as a Script Lab held this summer. “This will be a permanent feature of the studios and is one of our priorities,” he stressed.

Glavkino is a private initiative with investor Vitaly Golovachova holding 50% of the shares and the remaining 50% in the hands of Konstantin Ernst, director general of ChannelOne, the Uralsib Bank’s Meta Fund, actor-director-producer Fyodor Bondarchuk and CEO Bachurin. 

Also, Peter Greenaway’s adaptation of the Thomas Mann novella Death In Venice, entitled Food For Love, was awarded Glavkino’s best pitch prize at the Moscow Business Square, of 30,000 euros worth of services from the production complex.