Super Studios To Build $750M Production Campus In Mansfield
A $750M film and television studio campus set to begin construction this summer aims to continue Tarrant County's growth as a film and television hot spot.
Super Studios USA LLC will begin work in August on a 75-acre mixed-use development at 561 Easy Drive in Mansfield to create a purpose-built film industry campus.
The $750M project will include an artificial intelligence-enabled studio with eight soundstages, 800 luxury condominiums and townhouses, a hotel, more than 430K SF of retail and an undisclosed amount of office space, The Dallas Morning News reported.
The $50M first phase of the project is expected to be completed by June 2027 and followed by nine additional phases over the next five years. Initial construction will include four 18K SF soundstages and a 42K SF office building.
The building’s third floor will be used for AI work, postproduction and a data center, Super Studios USA Chief Financial Officer Richard Judson told the DMN.
The campus will also offer a trade school for production assistants and around 20K SF of small data centers distributed between the soundstages.
The Mansfield Economic Development Corp. sold more than 21 acres of the site to Super Studios for $1 in February of last year. The city agency also plans to reimburse 100% of the developer’s impact fees for the initial phase of the project as an economic incentive to the company.
Dallas-based Lineage Legacy Partners will serve as Super Studios’ development partner on the project, according to the Dallas Business Journal. Gensler and Arco will provide design work, and Los Angeles-based Full Send Partners is the investment bank.
Judson said the project has already signed a studio tenant but couldn’t reveal its identity because of a nondisclosure agreement.
Filmmaker and Super Studios CEO Angel Gracia said the mixed-use project is designed to work with the 12-hour schedule commonly used in the film industry.
“We are designing something that caters to us and to our community, filmmakers, and we always feel that it's never quite tackled that way,” Gracia told the DBJ. “When you go to a studio, it is a cold warehouse sort of environment, and then you go to the hotels, and you're always missing something.”
The campus will be around 20 miles southwest of Fort Worth, where Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan has set up shop.
Sheridan's SGS Studios, in collaboration with Paramount Television, opened a 450K SF studio campus last August in Hillwood’s AllianceTexas master-planned development. Hillwood is also developing another eight soundstages in Alliance, spanning 300K SF.
As part of an effort to attract the development of these types of production facilities, the Texas Legislature increased funding for the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program last year. The new law guarantees $300M worth of program funding every two years for the next decade.
