A US production company has reserved nine of the 13 soundstages available for commercial hire in the Santiago area for a 16-week shoot, triggering an immediate shortage that is threatening advertising campaigns, television work and smaller films. The booking, announced on Sunday, is for The Dirt Juggler, a slapstick comedy built around a runaway earthmover.
Local operators say the remaining stages were largely booked within hours, as production managers rushed to protect projects due to start this month. One rental broker quoted a client CLP 9.4 million (about €8,800) for a day in a medium-sized stage, up from CLP 3.6 million (about €3,400) last week.
The booking that emptied Santiago
The booking covers nearly all large, climate-controlled stages in the capital, according to Olivia Morin, managing director of Lumbre Stageworks, one of the facilities operators. The production will build a mock construction site inside two adjoining stages in Quilicura, north of central Santiago, and use seven others for sets, workshops and equipment storage.
“We had a normal week on Friday; by Sunday morning, every producer we know was asking where they could put a camera,” Morin said. She said Lumbre had fielded 46 calls from local companies since the announcement, including requests to shift shoots to Valparaíso or stretch a three-day booking into overnight work.
A foreign production can fill a stage; this one has booked the room, the corridor and the calendar.
Olivia Morin, managing director of Lumbre Stageworks
Josefina Collado, a production manager whose team is preparing a series of retail advertisements, said two shoots scheduled for next week had been postponed and a third was being priced for a location outside the capital. Her crew has 38 people booked for the work, she said, and she expects several to lose paid days if the campaign slips.
Local crews count the cost
The production company, Copper Kite Pictures, said it chose Santiago for its soundstages, nearby desert and coastal locations, and a local crew pool able to build large practical sets. It said the shoot would hire 620 Chilean workers over four months and spend CLP 18 billion (about €17 million) locally, including on transport, set construction and accommodation.
Ifeanyichukwu Abiodun, an independent film-industry analyst, estimated that delayed and displaced local productions could put the same CLP 18 billion in planned work at risk, though he said the eventual loss would depend on whether clients accept new dates. “The spend from one large shoot is real, but the shortage pushes costs onto dozens of smaller firms that cannot wait four months,” he said.
Chile has attracted foreign productions with skilled crews and varied scenery, but its stage capacity is concentrated around Santiago. Rental operators say new facilities take years to plan and equip, and there is no spare indoor space large enough to absorb a booking of this scale at short notice.
Local producers are now trying to secure stages in Valparaíso and Concepción, or convert warehouses into temporary shooting spaces. Copper Kite says its build begins on 12 October and is expected to finish in February; Collado said clients would start cancelling projects if replacement dates were not confirmed by Tuesday.
