New TV and film studios business, Versa Studios, has opened Versa ABC, a 5,000 sq ft studio overlooking Manchester City centre.
The facility will take over the top two floors of the ABC building, part of the Enterprise City development in Manchester, and will be the new home of the BBC One Daytime’s Morning Live which has moved to Manchester from London.
The new high-spec studio provides full facilities including production galleries, dressing rooms, production office and green rooms.
Versa Studios has also announced that it will be taking over the Manchester Studios complex and will have the studio ready for operation “almost immediately.”
Versa’s will “substantially” renew and launch five further studios in 2023, totalling an additional 55,000 sq ft of studio facilities, two of which will be fully equipped for TV broadcast, and three others for more specialist productions including a full music recording studio.
Versa will work with Department, the tech and media facilities provider that operates Bonded warehouse and ABC buildings and is already embedded in Enterprise City, to “ensure full access is given to the studios’ inventory for creative content makers in the commercial market.”
Versa Manchester and Versa ABC studios will join the recently launched Versa London – a 10,000 sq ft studio with a further 20,000 sq ft of fully accessible ancillary space, in West London, which hosted ITV’s game show, Walk the Line.
As previously announced, Versa Studios also has plans to launch in Leeds, with plans for a major facilities network that will see a combined 330,000 square foot of new, high-spec studio space.
Executive Director of Versa, Charlie Ingall, said: “We are thrilled to be realising our ambition of expanding our operations into Manchester. In Manchester City centre, by Summer 2023, VERSA will be operating three fully equipped TV broadcast studios and a further 10 that will cater for a diverse range of production types including non-scripted broadcast TV, scripted film & drama, music, commercials, content creation and gaming. Our spaces will be ideal for a variety of uses including performance and events.
“We fully intend to create a creative media cluster in Manchester rather than simply a set of TV studios. We are particularly excited to work with Department and to also work alongside the Factory in providing facilities for all types of creators, producers and performers. We want to bring back content creation, production and performance to Manchester City centre as part of Enterprise City. For VERSA, this reflects our vision to create a network of studios across the UK providing best in class creative environments for productions and media businesses to thrive.”
Jon Creamer
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