Just 10 miles from Trilith Studios, a new studio operation called Cinema South Studios is planning to build studios on 60 acres on the northern edge of Fayette County.
The facility, which was first announced last July, will cost $135 million to build out the entire space. The owners plan to break ground in March, organizers said in a press release Thursday.
Tammy Williams has partnered with Gary Guidry, an investor and CEO of G-Square Events and Black Promoters Collective to make this happen. She said she will be the first majority Black female owner of a studio she knows of in the state.
Williams, in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said she has been wanting studio space for 12 years. Guidry, she said, is making this happen.
“We’ve been patient,” she said. “This has not been an overnight thing, this vision for us.”
She said they hope to have the first two soundstages ready for production by the first quarter of 2023.
Cinema South Studios is coincidentally less than 10 miles from Trilith Studios, one of the largest production studios in North America. Williams said she actually rented space at Trilith for five years when it was called Pinewood.
She currently has a separate 16,000-square-foot warehouse space near the new site she has used for production.
Once the entire campus is finished, she said Cinema South will feature up to 11 soundstages, a back-lot, a prop house, a wardrobe rental facility, a lighting grip rental house, a transportation company and an office building with a theater and post-production facilities.
“The demand for soundstages is happening globally and the ownership rarely looks like us let alone an African American woman,” Guidry said in the release. “When I choose to invest, I evaluate the need of the business and the ownership. Investing in Tammy Williams and her team of professionals convinced me that buying the land in Fayetteville, GA was a sound decision with the talents of her at the helm.”
Cinema South will also be home to Williams’ production company, Tammy’Dele Films, as well as her job training and educational divisions, Tammy’Dele Films Workshops, and Cinema South Film Academy.
Williams said she started her job training film academy in 2012 and has served more than 2,500 students over the past decade. She now offers 25 different types of workshops.
Cinema South joins several other new studios in the works including one in Athens, one near the Indian Creek MARTA station and one in Doraville. Existing studios ike Cinelease, Blackhall Studios and EUE Screen Gems are expanding as well.
