Portimão film studios still searching for investors

Sunday, 30 May 2010 00:00

The authors of Picture Portugal, the film studio project that is to be created in Portimão and its respective fund that will finance the shooting of 11 north-American movies in Portugal, are still looking for investments from American companies including some of the biggest producers in the USA. Speaking to Lusa News Agency, Luis Carito, president of Portimão Urbis, the municipal company that is responsible for Picture Portugal, admitted that the planning has somewhat “skidded” off course due to a delay in the project’s economic study, but guaranteed that “the project is still going forward”.

Carito explained that, “promotional actions for the project have multiplied over the past few months, as has contact with main north-American ‘majors’, to integrate the holding that we intend to create”. “Two weeks ago, because of the Oscars, we were in LA where we held a huge promotional auction at a dinner with 600 people from the industry and met with main producers”, Luis Carito explained. Among potential investors who have been approached are CBS-Paramount, Universal, Fox, Sony and Warner Brothers, they will join Portuguese investors, alongside national ambassadors such as actor Joaquim de Almeida and Carlos Mattos, Portuguese businessman and co-winner of two Oscars (in 1989 and 1991) for the invention of filming equipment that made a difference to the films ‘ET’, by Steven Spielberg, and ‘Cotton Club’, by Francis Ford Coppola. The aim is to convince key players to invest part of the €25 million necessary to build the first phase of the studio complex, which will comprise five studios measuring 11,600 square meters, as well as the €7.5 million that will guarantee the shooting of 11 films in Portugal.