Anita Verma-Lallian, founder of Camelback Productions, doesn’t see the future of film production in Los Angeles. Instead, in her vision, it is on a complex one hour’s drive west of Phoenix, complete with backlots, a Universal Studios-inspired theme park — and a data center. Such is the AI-powered future Verma-Lallian hopes to achieve with a sprawling 1,400-acre complex off the I-10 interstate in Arizona, the state she calls home and where she believes more productions should be based.
The compound will also include a suite of hotels and resorts, a collection of stores, residential space, and an AI and tech center — all powered by the data center in what the company says is the largest film and entertainment complex in the U.S. The project has estimated price tag of between $6 billion and $12 billion, with funding derived in phases from a mix of private equity investors, construction loans and investment from Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors approved the zoning of 1,000 acres of the project Wednesday, and Verma-Lallian hopes to break ground on the project within the next year and roll it out in phases over the next decade.
The “passion project,” as Verma-Lallian puts it, is ambitious, fusing her real estate experience as the founder of Arizona Land Consulting, which oversees a roughly $1 billion portfolio, with her passion for film as CEO of Camelback, an independent production company. She hopes for the project to be sustainable, powered completely through renewable energy resources such as solar grids and employing an advanced water conservation system. You’re about four and a half hours or so from Burbank, but it’s a lot easier in certain ways.
Arizona is a [right-to-work] state. You don’t have some of the unions you have in California. Cost of land is usually a lot cheaper.
Taxes, operating expenses, things like that, can be significantly lower in Arizona.” But its existence alone is likely to stir controversy. For starters, many Americans across the political spectrum profess their distaste for data centers. Moreover, Hollywood unions and civic leaders have been desperate to retain productions in Los Angeles after a yearslong departure to other cities and countries and as the industry writ large grapples with AI’s impact on the production process.
The Arizona project shows that Verma-Lallian, who has spent years breaking into the market, is not afraid to ruffle feathers in the ultimate hope of boosting the production pipeline. Verma-Lallian — known in part for her purchase of the Pacific Palisades home of actor Matthew Perry roughly a year after he died at the estate — doesn’t see the broad backlash against data centers as problematic per se. Having worked on data center projects through her real estate portfolio, Verma-Lallian says it’s all a matter of where they are sited.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
