Namibia’s coastal town of Swakopmund will soon be home to the country’s only movie studio.
Namibia’s Namib Desert is a sought after destination by international filmmakers with a number of Hollywood blockbusters such as ‘The Mummy’, ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’, ‘10,000 BC’, ‘Flight of the Phoenix’, and ‘The Cell’ having been partly filmed in the country.
Namibia Motion Picture Studios recently announced that it has commissioned an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and engaged a high-profile American industry expert to produce the Market Demand Assessment for the film studio that had been requested by the Swakopmund Municipality.
A 115 hectare plot has been identified by the Municipality as the location for the film studio with construction scheduled to begin in early 2025. The studio will include four sound stages, post-production and animation facilities, as well as classrooms for training Namibian film and television crew members.
“Multi-million dollar productions will no longer have to fly in with their own crew then fly out again to shoot interior scenes due to Namibia’s current lack of crews and world-class studio facilities,” says James M. Russell, one of the partners in Namibia Motion Picture Studios.
Russell says the film studio will be powered by an 18-hectare solar facility to be comprised of 17 hectares at ground-level and additional panels on the parking structures and service building roofs.
“We expect to generate 14k Mwh per year with two Tesla megapacks for storage, two diesel generators for back-up power. The solar installation alone will represent an investment of US$18 million (approximately N$325 million),” says Russell.
