The Bottle Yard Studios: Funding boost for Bristol studio

The Pale Horse, shown on the BBC in 2020, was filmed at The Bottle Yard Studios

A major TV and film studio has been given nearly £12m to fund an expansion project.

The Bottle Yard Studios in Bristol will use £135,000 to develop a business case and another £11.7m for purchase costs and for other work.

Stephen Merchant's new series The Offenders is being recorded there and it is also used for ITV's quiz Tipping Point and Channel 4's The Crystal Maze.

The West of England Combined Authority (WECA) confirmed the funding on Friday.

Netflix Originals series The Last Bus and Starz Original series Becoming Elizabeth are also currently in production at the studio.

The Pale Horse, shown on the BBC in 2020, and The Spanish Princess, recorded for Starz, were also filmed there.

An industrial building in Hawkfield Business Park, about half a mile from the main studio site, will be converted into three new sound stages.

The Spanish Princess was also recorded at the studios

Other improvement work will be carried out on existing buildings at the main site.

The project is expected to create about 1,000 jobs over 10 years.

The facility was opened in 2010 on a disused industrial site in South Bristol and is run by Bristol City Council.

Laura Aviles, senior Bristol film manager for the authority, said the funding was "an extremely positive step in the right direction".

She said the studio had recently seen a "significant rise" in demand for space, which was "already high before the pandemic".

Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol, said the decision was "a major boost to our wider regeneration plans, bringing growth and jobs into the area".

While Tim Bowles, Mayor of the West of England, said the studio was a "terrific example" of the region's "vibrant creative sector that brings so much joy to people right across the globe".