Robert Halmi’s Great Point Studios has partnered with Spain’s Grup Mediapro to type Phygital FX providing expansive manufacturing companies and led by Mediapro veteran Mario Sousa.
Plans are for the three way partnership, initially a U.S. venture, to increase globally, offering full manufacturing companies to the movie and tv trade from stage and studio leases, to rental tools together with lighting, grip and electrical, postproduction companies, graphics and digital manufacturing companies.
Halmi advised Deadline that Phygital has dedicated over $50 million to amass state-of-the-art lighting and grip tools, and put aside 200,000 sq. ft of house to retailer it in throughout Great Point’s rising roster of studio places. Lionsgate Studio Yonkers is up and working whereas nonetheless being constructed out. Great Point now has 63 movie phases open or below development at places in Yonkers, Atlanta, Buffalo, Newark and Wales. Halmi stepped in as did different builders to handle the deficit of studio house as streaming led to a surge in content material manufacturing.
Phygital (the title is a mixture of the phrases ‘physical’ and ‘digital’) can even supply companies to productions outdoors the Great Point community.
Spain-based Mediapro is an anchor tenant at Lionsgate Studios Yonkers. The European media powerhouse, which produces greater than 12,000 dwell occasions annually, alongside with13 top-tier nationwide soccer competitions, in addition to scripted and unscripted content material, has a serious world tools and expertise enterprise.
Souza, who was most not too long ago in Miami for Mediapro, moved to New York in 2019 to increase its manufacturing companies Stateside, in the end touchdown a base at Mediapro phases in Yonkers. Halmi, on the identical time, wished to supply Great Point producers the comfort of not having to haul in their very own tools, and to offer the newest of what the market has to supply as productions, particularly TV, have expanded, changing into larger, extra multilayered and complicated.
Halmi proposed a broad enterprise servicing all Great Point places, and the broader trade, however didn’t have anybody in home to guide it. That led to the JV with Phygital and Sousa on the helm.
The firm has been energetic for some time, servicing manufacturing from Raising Kanan to Winston, however simply closed all of the JV paperwork and formally named Sousa CEO of what the exec known as “a one-stop shop for technical stages services.”
That additionally coincided with strikes by writers and actors in a time of upheaval within the leisure trade. As a end result, Souza stated he’s pivoted a bit, now musicals, that are nonetheless up and working, business shoots and different productions that want lighting and companies. “This is a start-up,” he stated. “So we need to try…These now are some of my priorities.”
When the strikes finish and productions return — to units that had been left on phases — the corporate is able to gear up.
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