BORICUA-WOOD? PUERTO RICO Film studio in the works
With its crumbling buildings, thick vegetation and scurrying lizards, the blighted lot near Old San Juan would make a great set for a horror film. Instead, developers are hoping it will tell another kind of story: one about how a struggling island became a moviemaking powerhouse.
If all goes well, by 2022 this forlorn 14-acre lot will be home to a buzzing movie production facility with three or four sound stages, a backlot with facades of Miami and New York, and warehouses full of gaffers, electricians and set designers.
Puerto Rico is already attracting big budget productions like Johnny Depp’s “The Rum Diary,” “Bad Boys II” and “Fast Five” — part of the “Fast and the Furious” franchise — but it doesn’t have the sound stages and post-production facilities to make the island a onestop shop.
“It really is an amazing island, it has everything a film company could want,” said Keith St. Clair, the man behind the $70 million Puerto Rico Film District project. “You have beaches, you have rainforests, you have cities, you have culture, you have Old [San Juan], you have great food — everything on this island is perfect for the creation of movies, and the studio will be icing on that cake.”
The initiative comes as Puerto Rico is hoping to star in its own rags-to-riches story. The island is staggering under more than $72 billion in debt and billions more in unfunded pension obligations, unemployment is twice the national average and more than 133,000 people left last year in the wake of a devastating 2017 hurricane season.
Once the Film District is up and running, it could potentially create about 1,300 jobs and pave the way for more, St. Clair said.
“We’d like to build a stunt school — start educating people so they can come back here and stay
A real estate developer is pushing forward with plans to build a $70 million movie studio in San Juan. The 14-acre
facility will likely face stiff competition.