Rome’s Cinecittà studios are hitting unprecedented levels of occupancy, as the historic site continues to upgrade and expand its facilities under a five-year industrial plan, Cinecitta SpA CEO Nicola Maccanico said on Wednesday.

“Cinecittà has never been so full,” he told a presentation at the Venice Film Festival, looking at the early results of the industrial plan, which runs until 2026 and will see €260m worth of investment put into the facility.

Maccanico said Cinecittà’s 18 studios were currently fully-booked and that this trend would continue into the first half of 2023.  He added that 70% of the productions booked in for 2023 were international in nature, and increasingly larger and more ambitious in scale.

He cited a dozen productions that had recently shot or were gearing up to shoot at the studios including Nanni Moretti’s Il Sol Dell Avvenire; Bill Holderman’s Book Club 2, starring Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen, Angelina Jolie’s Without Blood, starring Salma Hayek and  Demián Bichir; historic drama Domina 2 starring Kasia Smutniak, Edward Berger’s Concave and Saverio Costanza’s Finalmente L’Alba, set against the backdrop of Cinecittà’s 1950s heyday.

Closer relationships with big audiovisual groups had played their part in helping to increase activity, said Maccanico, citing Cinecittà’s strategic pact with Fremantle announced earlier this year, under which the latter is continuously renting six of its studios for five years.

Maccanico revealed Cinecittà had also recently signed a strategic pact with Lumina Studios giving it access to four additional studio spaces in northern Rome

The exec also detailed the further expansion plans. He said five new studios — ranging between 4,900 square feet and 11,000 square feet in size – would be built in the existing Cinecittà precinct. This will increase total studio space to 65,000 square feet from the current 26,000 square feet.

Cinecittà is also finalising plans to build another eight studios on a separate site close-by the original studios, he revealed.

Maccanico also detailed a number of technology-driven upgrades which include the construction of its T6 Green Virtual Studio in 2021, as well as the largest LED wall in Europe, which was recently used for the shoot of Without Blood.

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