Pinewood Studios, Iconic Film Production Hub, Secures Approval for £1 Billion Data Center Campus

Pinewood Studios to Build £1 Billion Data Center on Its Buckinghamshire Campus

March 6, 2026

In a significant move highlighting the convergence of media and digital infrastructure, the legendary Pinewood Studios has received planning permission to construct a major data center campus on its estate in Buckinghamshire, England. The project underscores a strategic pivot by traditional media and entertainment facilities to capitalize on the booming demand for data processing and storage capacity, particularly from the artificial intelligence and cloud computing sectors.

The Buckinghamshire Council voted on February 25 to approve the application submitted by Pinewood Studios itself. The approved plans authorize the development of a data center complex valued at approximately £1 billion (around $1.3 billion) on land located directly south of the world-renowned film lot. The campus will comprise four data center buildings, offering up to 55,030 square meters (592,340 square feet) of technical space, supported by two electrical substations and ancillary plants. A notable feature of the development is the inclusion of a six-acre "community garden" complete with a learning space and an orchard.

While specific power capacity and potential anchor tenants have not been disclosed, the scale of the investment signals a major new entrant into the UK's critical infrastructure landscape. Pinewood Group first floated the concept for a data center on the site in February 2025, before formally submitting its application on July 3, 2025. The decision to diversify comes as the studio, long hailed as the "spiritual home of the British film industry" by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a January 2025 visit, seeks new revenue streams amid fluctuations in traditional film and television production.

The site has hosted production for iconic franchises including James Bond, Star Wars, and Marvel's The Avengers, the latter of which moved its main production servers and offices to Pinewood in 2025. This existing high-performance computing footprint provides a natural adjacency for the new data center venture.

The development is poised to have considerable implications for the UK's data center industry, adding substantial capacity in the Southeast England region, which is already a major hub. It also represents a broader trend of property owners with large, secure, and power-rich estates—from former industrial sites to, in this case, a creative campus—repurposing assets to meet the insatiable needs of the digital economy.

Source: datacenterdynamics