It looks like the fairytale is going to come true.

More than 2,400 new jobs, £300million of investment and leisure facilities locals have demanded for years are heading to Seaham, thanks to plans for a film complex.

Coming soon...?
FILM makers could look to local landmarks and locations as inspiration for their new projects.

We've come up with some names they could give to re-makes.

Do you have any other suggestions to add to our list? Post them in our forum

Easington Rider
Murton on the Orient Express
Man for All Seahams
Dawdon of the Dead
Jurassic Dalton Park
Meet Joe Blackhall
A Shotton in the Dark
The Colliery Purple
School of Rock House
Nose's Point Blank

The Centre of Creative Excellence, which been given outline permission by District of Easington to be built on land off the A182 at Dawdon, will bring an initial investment of £192million into the project, with millions more to be pumped into Wearside and the North East as a result.

Unknown to many, the proposals by Coolmore Estates were in discussion for four years before they were finally revealed in a planning application.

In addition to the studio complex, which will attract film and television productions alike, computer-generated designers and DVD-making facilities, the site will become a campus for up to 2,000 students from East Durham and Houghall College and Sunderland University.

But it will be so much more than just a business park and a few halls of residence.

With two hotels, one with 150 beds with a four-star rating with 20 serviced apartments and a smaller 48-bed hotel aimed at business use, a public building which could be used as an art gallery or exhibition centre, a spa, sports hall and gym, plus parklands, lakes and the promised relocation of a bridle path, it will be a town in its own right.

A peek at the plans when they were first submitted in December also showed an outdoor swimming pool, theatres and cinemas.

One NorthEast, the regional development agency which has already played a major part in the regeneration of Seaham, has welcomed the plans.

Stacy Hall is the agency's director of communications and tourism.
She said: "The decision is an important milestone in the process of developing this groundbreaking scheme.

"It has the potential to create many new jobs, generate major investment into the region and put Seaham and North East England on the international film-making map.

"The film studio and Centre of Creative Excellence would be the first complex of its kind in the UK for the past 50 years and it would add to the growing success story that is Seaham and its surrounding area."

The scheme will also be a major boost to the film world, which has already expressed an interest in the North East because of the wealth of locations it can offer, but has been let down by a lack of studio space.

Northern Film and Media has been working with Coolmore as it moves towards making the plans on paper a reality. Tom Harvey, chief executive of the region's screen agency, said the studio will allow the area to compete for business internationally.

He added: "We certainly have the world class locations – beautiful coastal landscapes to cosmopolitan city centres and historic landmarks – the range of which could support any kind of TV series or feature production.

"We also have a proven track record when it comes to facilitating large-scale, award-winning film production – Atonement, Elizabeth, Billy Elliot and Harry Potter were all shot here.

"But feature film production in the North East has always been a challenge.

"We are currently missing the production studio facilities that would make the region a consistent option for continuing drama and feature film production."

However, the agency realises there is still much work to do before work begins on the site – it is likely to be two years before builders move in and 10 before is complete, with work already under way on the finer details.

Mr Harvey said: "This is the first step. There remains a long way to go between planning application and a fully functioning studio, but we are hopeful that, with the news, the film and TV industries of the region can continue to grow.

"The moving image industry of the North East currently generates in the region of £121m every year.

"Of this, £7m of this is brought in annually by visiting production companies.

"This is a good place to start, but we need to do more to attract further production, and further inward investment, into the region.

"The studio will allow us to compete on the national and international stage and we'd be looking at attracting one off and continuing drama for network television as well as production teams for feature film, but it is important to remember that this is also great news for local talent."




Opening up whole new worlds

COMPUTING experts will put their special touch to productions once tinsel town comes to the North East,
The University of Sunderland, which will run courses alongside East Durham and Houghall College, will offer fledgling film- makers a unique new facility which can let them create everything from the lands of Narnia to the worlds of Toy Story and Cars, pictured below, with the click of a mouse.
Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) brings the impossible to life on screen.
The massive computing power needed to create such images has been the preserve of a handful of the world's top film companies.
But now, as the North East launches its own rival to Pinewood, those images are available from a brand new facility launched at the university.
Its researchers have created a new system which can be used as a "render farm", to place images and models quickly into CGI which, giving effects with the same quality as those in Hollywood blockbusters.
A decade ago, a system with the same processing power would have cost many millions of pounds to obtain the same level of performance, but the new system pioneered at Sunderland does so at a fraction of the cost, with the added bonus of minimising damage to the environment.
The Sunderland grid system uses a cluster of smaller linked computers to create a powerful single computer.