Perhaps so, but a glance at the plans makes it clear that Ealing Studios will essentially be rebuilt. Even the old house on the green - known as The White House, once the office of Sir Michael Balcon - is to be extended, with a new glazed pavilion overlooking the garden behind. True, the hangar-like main sound stages are retained, but now cleaned up and plugged into a different sort of set-up entirely.
This includes a single, large new Burland-designed building right at the centre of the site, with a circular internal courtyard - the main entrance to the whole complex, its dimensions calculated from the turning-circle of the average scenery truck - that can be covered over with a temporary translucent roof. The idea is that, as well as housing film back-up companies, all the new buildings can be used to support sets and so double as extra production areas. The history of the site is of film-makers taking over every available space for productions, so why not make that easier?
Even before the big work gets under way, the new design ethos is apparent. Handelsman has converted one of the smaller and tattier studio buildings into the temporary main office for the company, with a tidied-up logo and a screen permanently showing clips from Ealing films. There’s a sense of style and space about this low-key conversion, as well as history - Handelsman remarks that the water tank in which much of “The Cruel Sea” was filmed is still there, under the floor. “The idea,” he says, “is to use Ealing as a home for talent. What I find exciting is being able to be a catalyst in transforming an existing complex with fascinating traditions. It’s a fantastic challenge.”
The Ealing Studios, whatever they say, will lose most of that make-do-and-mend, muddling-through character. All the better. It’s the 21st century. Nostalgia is fine up to a point (and a small museum of British film is mooted here), but when nothing much has changed on an industrial site in 60 years, something more than a lick of paint is needed. The new Ealing is designed for today’s film business, not for misty-eyed devotees of Stanley Holloway and George Formby. Which is, frankly, something of a relief.
