The Effingham County Industrial Development Authority unanimously approved an agreement Tuesday with Medient Studios Inc. for a $90 million movie studio and entertainment facility expected to create 1,000 jobs.
Manu Kumaran, chairman and chief executive officer of Medient, said he wants to revamp the film industry, creating full-time, permanent jobs harkening back to the days when film studios dominated the industry. Kumaran is a veteran of the industry who has produced 19 feature films in four languages.
Medient is a publicly listed film production and distribution company with a strong presence in India and North America. John Henry, chief executive officer of the development authority, said the company is based in Los Angeles.
The company’s goal is to make films less expensive. Kumaran said the costs of producing movies have risen astronomically, while the market is not supporting such increases.
“You’ll go to work in a film studio like you’d go to work in a car factory,” Kumaran said. “The consumer doesn’t care where the green screen is.”
The campus, which will take up most of the IDA’s 1,500 acres near Old River Road and Interstate 16, will be environmentally friendly, with no vehicles that operate on fossil fuels and with health care, day care, schooling, shopping and housing for workers and their families.
In addition to making eight to 10 movies a year, the company will produce video games at the site.
Architect Shaleen Sharma, from Delhi, India, said he was told to “dream big” when designing the complex, which includes tall “trees” with solar panels on the top. The trees will light up at night and have waterfalls inside them.
The entrance to the complex will be a tall bridge over the wetlands, which will end on the sixth floor of the main building.
A feature called the “leaf” will be a glass covering a more than 300,000-square-foot area where large concerts, for 25,000 people, can be held. Sharma said the leaf will be visible from I-16. It will include an auditorium that will seat about 9,000 people.
Kumaran said the goal is to create a world-class destination where famous artists will want to perform.
The complex also will include an “experiential gaming area” where visitors will play virtual reality games.
“This is a monster project, unlike anything we’ve seen in the past, anywhere in the country,” Henry said.
Medient bills the complex as “the largest movie production facility” in America. The first phase of the project will include 16 soundstages in various buildings totaling about a quarter of a million square feet.
No detailed timetable has been completed, but Kumaran said plans call for work to begin on movies as early as this summer, before any new buildings are constructed.
The master plan is ready for submission to the county, and construction is slated to begin in June.
The dollars
The $90 million figure includes $10 million for land, $40 million for equipment and $40 million for buildings.
Kumaran said the company has underwriting from a New York investment bank to start construction.
The $10 million for land is the amount Effingham County IDA will receive over a 20-year lease. No payment will be due for the first or second year. The third year, the rent will cost $555,565. For the fourth through 20th years, the rent will be $555,555 each year.
The IDA will provide $1.25 million for site development.
Medient will pay no property taxes or payments in lieu of taxes for the 20 years, Henry said.
An investment of $90 million and 1,000 jobs are the performance goals called for in the memorandum of understanding. Kumaran said he expects more than 1,200 jobs to be created eventually.
Henry said if the company builds everything it wants, the overall cost of the investment could reach $300 million.
The jobs will not only be in film making and video development but in support services such as food service and health care.
Henry said the average salary for all the jobs will be $39,000 a year. Kumaran estimated one-quarter of the jobs will be given to people from outside the area.
Kumaran said Effingham has been working with his company since the first of November. He said Effingham beat New York and Pennsylvania for the project, and in Georgia, beat Savannah and Atlanta.
He said good weather was a main draw, as was the lifestyle that the Savannah area affords. He said the business has to be in an attractive, safe place where employees will want to live.
This will be the company’s first film studios.
The company’s movies include the dramas “Yellow,” and “Garp,” and the British horror film “Storage 24.”
Big effort
Four county commissioners and the county administrator attended the IDA’s special called meeting at 8 a.m. to approve the memorandum of understanding with Medient.
Landing the project took “a big community effort,” said Dennis Webb, chairman of the IDA. “At the end of today, a lot of people who have never heard of Effingham County will know where we are and what we are doing,” he said.
Trip Tollison, acting president of the Savannah Economic Development Authority, called the plans a “wonderful concept, wonderful idea.”
He said the locals and the state have done what they said they would do.
“Now it’s up to the company to put their skin in,” Tollison said.
Michael Chaney, a professor at Savannah College of Art and Design in the film and television department, said the news is “fantastic, particularly since it’s Medient. Medient is producing important films that both challenge and enhance the 21st-century approach to film making.”
He said Medient is a small, independent studio.
“The movie ‘Yellow’ they did was a terrific film that wowed audiences at Toronto last year,” Chaney said. “They seem to take on material that has real significance in terms of character and social significance.”
SCAD’s film school has close to 600 students, he said.
— Reporter Adam Van Brimmer contributed to this story.
About Medient Studios Inc.
Medient Studios Inc. is a publicly listed company OTCQB:MDNT, www.medient.com.
It is a global film production and distribution company. It says its management team has 150 years of experience in the motion picture industry and is responsible for producing and/or financing more than 250 movies.
Fourteen movies, two music acts and several hundred live performance shows have been produced under the Medient banner.
On its website, Medient says it is “focused upon minimizing project risk and generating strong returns for investors by aggressively optimizing the use of subsidy structures, tax benefits and other incentives to reduce production costs, thereby increasing profit potential.”
The company has produced “a broad spectrum of films across various genres.” That includes “Bombay Boys,” an independent film “that carried Indian cinema beyond the song and dance routine of Bollywood,” and the award-winning Malayalam film “Aakshagopuram,” which was the first Indian film to be produced outside of that country. Its latest film, “Yellow,” was directed by Nick Cassavetes, who also directed “The Notebook.” Critics said “Yellow” included “surreal imagination,” “bizarre parallel realities” and was a “cinematic trip of mind-bending proportions.”
About Manu Kumaran
Kumaran is the chairman and chief executive officer of Medient Studios Inc.
Kumaran is a second-generation international film producer who has produced 19 feature films in four languages.
The oldest son of Malayalam film director and producer K.P. Kumaran, he has been in the film business from an early age, working primarily in production and distribution.
In 1988, he produced “Bombay Boys,” a movie that opened a new market for alternative cinema, bringing it into the mainstream.
In 2002, Kumaran established Medient and created ABOB, India’s first boy band. In 2008, he produced the Malayalam film “Aakashagopuram,” (Castle in the Air), based on the Henrik Ibsen play “Master Builder,” which he says was the first Indian film to be entirely produced outside of that country, setting “a new benchmark in East-West collaboration within the industry.”
“The first Indian producer to successfully manage the migration to the West, Kumaran is an expert in film tax credits and incentives and has built a reputation for producing theatrical quality releases at minimal costs with strong net margins,” the website says.
Source: www.medient.com.