Cinespace Opens New Studio Campus in Woodland Hills

Cinespace Studios opened a 10-acre production campus in Woodland Hills on March 2, adding six soundstages and 180,000 square feet of production space to the San Fernando Valley’s growing studio footprint.

Mayor Karen Bass cut the ribbon at the facility at 21200 Victory Blvd., marking Cinespace’s first Los Angeles location and its sixth global production hub. The campus includes six 18,000-square-foot soundstages and 72,000 square feet of production offices, bringing Cinespace’s total portfolio to 115 soundstages across 4.3 million square feet worldwide.

The company already has work on the boards. Production on “Nightwatching,” an upcoming thriller from directing duo Adam Schindler and Brian Netto, is underway at the new facility.

For the Valley’s production economy, the opening signals continued momentum at a moment when L.A.’s entertainment industry is still rebuilding. The sector absorbed back-to-back disruptions from the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2023 guild strikes, and the January 2025 wildfires. Studios that stayed put and companies now planting new flags are both betting that the recovery is real.

Cinespace has been building toward this kind of scale for years. Founded in Toronto in 1988 by Nick Mirkopoulos, the company entered the U.S. market in 2010 with its Chicago hub and later added facilities in Atlanta and Germany. Productions shot at Cinespace stages include “Stranger Things,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” In 2021, private equity firm TPG Real Estate Partners acquired the company for approximately $1.1 billion.

Eoin Egan, co-chief executive of Cinespace Studios, framed the Woodland Hills opening as a long-term bet on the market rather than a short-term opportunity grab. “Los Angeles is where this industry was built, and where its future continues to be shaped,” Egan said in a statement. “While the market is navigating a period of transition, we believe deeply in the resilience of this city, the talent that defines it, and the enduring demand for world-class production infrastructure.”

The Woodland Hills campus opened the same week Bass announced a significant cut to filming fees at Griffith Observatory, dropping the rate from $100,000 to $30,000, the lowest level since 2008. The city also announced it would reopen L.A. Central Library to film productions after more than a decade of restrictions. Those moves align with a broader push from City Hall and Sacramento to reverse years of runaway production losses to states with more competitive incentive programs.

The state’s own math has shifted dramatically on that front. Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation expanding California’s film and television tax credit program from $330 million annually to $750 million, with the increase running through 2030. That number puts California back in serious contention with Georgia, New York, and other states that have aggressively courted production dollars for more than a decade.

For Burbank, none of this is abstract. The city’s Media District sits at the center of the Valley’s production ecosystem, and the broader health of that ecosystem shapes everything from commercial lease rates on Olive Avenue to foot traffic at lunch spots on Alameda. When new stages open in Woodland Hills or Burbank proper, it typically means more crew, more vendors, and more support jobs circulating through the local economy.

Multiple additional soundstage projects are scheduled to open across the L.A. area later in 2026, suggesting the investment surge isn’t confined to a single facility or a single announcement cycle.

Bass pointed to the speed of Cinespace’s ramp-up as evidence the recovery has real traction. “Seeing new soundstages open with a production already underway speaks to the collective strength of our signature industry,” she said.

Whether the current wave of studio investment translates into a durable production rebound depends partly on factors no city or state policy can control, including streaming budgets, interest rates, and global demand for content. What the Cinespace opening does confirm is that major operators are willing to commit capital to Los Angeles square footage right now. For the Valley’s crew base, that’s the most concrete signal available.