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DIARY BERLIN • LOSANGELES • MILAN • FOYER • CANNES • TOKYO • LONDON PAGE11
Nobody had used it for a number of years and it was very eerie. Everytime you opened a door you thought there might be a dead body behind it. Anyway, Eon decided where the stages were going to go and how the workshops should be laid out. Then they said ‘see you in a couple of months time’ and left me as the newly-appointed studio man-
ager to pretty much supervise the building of it all.
“While we were filming later on, I as well as lots of other people on the show were walking around saying ‘Isn’t this place great? Wouldn’t it be nice if someone came along and pur- chased the site.’ And that’s exactly what happened,” says Dark. That “someone” was a company called
George Town Holdings, a subsidiary of the Malaysian-based conglomerate DKH. GTH first started looking at Leavesden during the filming of Goldeneye and acquired the premises that same year. Outline planning per- mission for the development of the studios, a studio tour, business park and residential complex was granted
in November, 1995. The site is now
Photos opposite page: the Leavesden complex with its 100 acres of backlot
above: Liv Tyler on the Leavesden set of Onegin - the exterior ice skating sequence on the River Neva outside St Petersburg
Continued over