James Bond studios makes £3.9m loss

Pinewood Shepperton studios slumped to a £3.9m loss in 2011 after it failed in an attempt to build replicas of Paris, New York and Amsterdam on green belt land.

The studios enjoyed record revenues of £50.7m in 2011, up by 17 per cent after it filmed scenes for movies such as The Hobbit and the next James Bond film, Skyfall. But it took an exceptional charge of £7.1m reflecting five years of costs for its "Project Pinewood" application, which officials turned down in January. This pushed the company, which is majority owned by the property group Peel Holdings, £3.9m into the red, after profits of £5.8m the previous year.

Project Pinewood would have seen the creation of a "purpose-built" film set with 1,400 permanent homes inside the streetscape buildings at Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire. The project would have cost £200m and created almost 1,000 jobs in the next 10 years, with 420 affordable homes offered inside the film sets. But it was fiercely resisted by campaigners.

The Pinewood and Shepperton studios have been home to more than 1,500 films in the last 75 years, while the two studios and the company's Teddington site have hosted more than 600 television shows.