LAS VEGAS — A-list talent. Major movies and epic television series. Groundbreaking immersive experiences based on some of the most popular movie franchises of all time.

In conjunction with CinemaCon, the annual convention of movie theater owners at Caesars Palace, Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Tony Vinciquerra and Simon Robinson, chief operating officer of Warner Bros. Discovery Studios, spoke to the Review-Journal about their plans for Summerlin Studios.

In doing so, they answered several lingering questions about the privately financed $1.8 billion project that would create 10 soundstages and a 2-acre backlot on 31 acres north of Flamingo Road and east of Town Center Drive.

Everything that follows is dependent upon the passage and approval of Assembly Bill 238. That bill, sponsored by Assembly Majority Leader Sandra Jauregui and co-sponsored by Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Daniele Monroe-Moreno, would overhaul Nevada’s program of filming incentives and transferable tax credits.

Why Las Vegas?

Location, location, location.

Some of the biggest names in Hollywood won’t leave Southern California because they don’t want to work too far from their homes. With Las Vegas being a 45-minute flight away, it’s assumed that many of them would waive their “L.A. only” status.

“That was the driving force right from the start,” Vinciquerra said. “We were having, I won’t say difficulty getting people to come to Atlanta or other parts of the world, but it was not easy with many top-level actors, A-plus actors, and directors. So this provides a real opportunity. The crews will be absolutely based in Nevada, and the actors and directors will come back and forth.”

What would be filmed here?

“We expect this to be a full-blown studio,” Robinson said, “a full-service studio that will produce major motion pictures.”

His team is also planning soundstages that would accommodate what he called “large-scale HBO-type productions. Think ‘The Penguin.’ Think ‘Game of Thrones.’ ”

Smaller productions along the lines of current Warner Bros. Discovery hits “The Pitt” and “Abbott Elementary” would be in the mix as well, Robinson said.

Vinciquerra didn’t venture into specifics but said Sony’s plans would include “probably a lot of TV shows and some film.”

“We have a very big unscripted business, too, and a lot of game shows,” he added. “So it will be a mix of all of that.”

What attracted Warner Bros. Discovery?

“We’ve been looking for a while for a place that we could build a third studio,” Robinson said.

The company’s lot in Burbank, California, has more than 30 soundstages with another 14 or 15 scheduled to open this year. Its Leavesden lot outside London has 10 soundstages with another dozen coming in 2026. That’s still not enough space as Warner Bros. Discovery is able to produce less than half of its more than $20 billion worth of content each year on its own property.

While the company continues to film in production hubs including Atlanta, Canada and Australia, Robinson said, “none of those locations really resonated with us” when it came to creating a new base.

He credited the existing pool of behind-the-scenes talent working on shows up and down the Strip — set builders, costumers, lighting experts and the like — as a valuable resource. “There are people who work in a similar environment to productions,” Robinson said. “Not exactly the same, but there’s an incumbent workforce that’s got complimentary skills.”

Robinson also called the number of students at CCSD schools, UNLV and other Nevada colleges and universities who want to work in the industry “a great pipeline.”

What happened with UNLV?

Warner Bros. Discovery announced it was joining the competing UNLV and Birtcher Development studio project on Aug. 20, 2024. Warner pulled out in January and signed onto Summerlin Studios the following month.

“We’re still very much in connection with UNLV,” Robinson said, clarifying that the split stemmed from not being able to come to financial terms with the project’s developers. His company’s goals were “much more aligned” with what was happening in Summerlin.

Warner Bros. Discovery is in the process of hiring UNLV interns for its Burbank lot, Robinson said, and the studio hosted “a whole bunch of UNLV students and faculty” on the lot at the end of March for a tour and a discussion about how they can work together.

What else is in the mix?

Aside from the local workforce, Robinson said the main reason Warner Bros. Discovery wants to put down roots in Las Vegas is the company’s growing business of tours and experiences.

The Burbank lot offers a range of tours, while the Leavesden lot has “Harry Potter”-based tours of sets, props and costume pieces from the eight-movie franchise that filmed there. Warner Bros. Discovery created another revenue stream when it opened a similar attraction in Tokyo in 2023 — another has been announced for Shanghai in 2027 — despite those cities having nothing to do with the making of the “Harry Potter” movies.

Summerlin Studios is expected to offer some type of tour as well. Beyond that, Robinson said, the company is looking to “really establish a Warner Bros. presence across several business streams there.”

To that end, he said, the company is planning “any number of activations,” including retail, themed food and beverage outlets, escape rooms and “true immersive experiences featuring a whole bunch of new technology. We’ve got some pretty exciting things that we’re looking at.”

Robinson mentioned the “Harry Potter,” “Game of Thrones,” “Matrix,” “Lord of the Rings” and DC franchises as possible themes for its local experiences. The studio also was responsible for “The Hangover” and “Ocean’s Eleven,” which would be natural fits for Las Vegas.

Will anyone want to film here?

Within 24 hours of the announcement that Warner Bros. was looking at Las Vegas, Robinson said he had calls from three filmmakers wanting to know how quickly the facilities would be ready because they were hoping to shoot here.

“Those movies have moved on already, but there’s plenty more to come,” he said. “So I’m confident we’re going to have a wide range of really exciting things being produced on the lot.”

What’s the timeline?

“As soon as we get the incentive programs agreed to, we’ll start digging,” Sony’s Vinciquerra said. “We’re shovel ready. We’re ready to go.”

Construction of the studio would take about two years.

What’s the latest on the jobs?

The most recent numbers provided by Summerlin Studios call for 19,000 jobs during construction and 17,680 jobs per year created or sustained upon completion. Direct studio jobs would have an average annual salary of $113,000.

“You have a very, very well-established crew base there, so that’s a very important part of it,” Vinciquerra said of the union workers on local shows. Sony hopes to build upon that base through training programs and apprenticeships.

Warner Bros. Discovery plans to work closely with the unions, Robinson said, to see what training their members would need to move between working on live shows and studio productions. Some jobs, he said, would be “straight swaps,” while others would involve a couple of days of classroom instruction and some may require recertification.

Robinson stressed that Summerlin Studios isn’t about taking jobs out of California.

“We’re continuing to invest in expanding (in) California, and we can invest and expand in Nevada,” he said. “And those two things are complementary, not competitive.”

How would Summerlin Studios be shared?

Both companies originally intended to have their own lots with 10 soundstages each. Now, they’re going to have to share that amount of space.

There’s precedent for this. In 1971, Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures, one of the flagship production companies under the Sony brand, joined forces and consolidated their movie and television studios in Burbank.

In Summerlin, Robinson said, there will be some shared spaces to avoid duplication. But Warner Bros. Discovery is designing its part of the lot and planning its soundstages to fit its needs, while Sony is doing the same.

Is the summer heat a concern?

Not really.

“Every location has its positives and negatives,” Vinciquerra said of current production hubs. Atlanta and New Orleans have high humidity. New York, Toronto and Vancouver have winters. The challenge in Sony’s base of Culver City, California, he added, is the traffic.

“There’s always a challenge,” he said.

Was all this really as simple as Mark Wahlberg wanting to make more movies here?

The actor moved to Summerlin in August 2022 and immediately began talking about turning Las Vegas into “Hollywood 2.0.”

“We do a lot of business with Mark, and he’s a good friend,” Vinciquerra said. “We were going down the same path, let’s put it that way. He and I were talking about (building a studio) at the same moment.”

Once Sony and Wahlberg realized they had similar goals, Vinciquerra said they got together, and the actor introduced Sony executives to the team at Howard Hughes Holdings, the third partner in Summerlin Studios.

“So,” he added, “Mark is an integral part of it.”

What’s next?

Vinciquerra sees Summerlin Studios as a first step.

“What we think, at least here at Sony,” he said, “is that once the incentives are approved and we get the facility built, that there will be such a great demand for production in Nevada that it will expand the program. … We’re hoping it will spur even further development. Hopefully somebody else will build a production lot as well and create more and more business there.”

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