LV movie studio launched

Monday, Aug. 28, 2000 | 11:21 a.m.

Two Las Vegas women with a combined 62 years of experience in the entertainment industry are unveiling plans today to open a movie studio here.

Temma Pentecost-Keatan and Phyllis Cesare-Taie, co-presidents and chief executive officers of Silver Star Studios, which they refer to as S3, say they'll succeed where others have struggled by developing the three phases of their project as production grows in Las Vegas.

The partners have acquired a warehouse at 5375 S. Procyon Ave. and are in the process of securing the permits they need to soundproof the building and develop 20 production offices. Remodeling is scheduled to begin in October and two sound stages are expected to be ready for use in January.

The 30,000-square-foot building will include sound stages of 11,475 square feet and 3,825 square feet. But it's only a temporary facility, according to the business plan the partners are unveiling at an afternoon news conference.

The partners plan to acquire property and design a permanent home within 18 months and have a six-stage studio operational within two years.

Cesare-Taie said whether the ambitious schedule can be maintained will depend on the success of the temporary facility, which is being financed privately by an unnamed investor and developed by Rohit Joshi of Las Vegas-based Joshi & Associates. The partners said the investor will put between $1 million and $1.5 million into developing the temporary facility.

"The film industry has said, 'If you build it, we will come,' and local supporters believe that's true as well," Cesare-Taie said during a tour of the facility. "Building a studio has been a dream of ours and we're finally going to see if they will come when we build it."

Cesare-Taie said her company is off to a good start -- it already has a client before construction of the sound stages begins. Television executive Merv Griffin is renting the facility for four days for a corporate function. The partners hope Griffin's guest list will take note of the facility and return with their own productions.

The partners said S3 also will get a boost from upcoming advertisements in the Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety, two major Hollywood trade publications. In addition, Cesare-Taie and Pentecost-Keatan intend to launch the 36th chapter of Women in Film, a professional organization that helps women pursuing careers in the film industry. Representatives of the WIF Los Angeles chapter will serve on the Las Vegas organization's board of directors.

The partners don't have a location for the permanent S3 facility, but initial plans are elaborate, calling for a hotel, restaurant and pool, a post-production facility, a child-care center and a fitness center on site. No cost estimate was given for the studio.

The partners already have struck a relationship with Century Productions, a post-production studio facility based near the temporary S3 facility.

Pentecost-Keatan said S3's goal won't be so much to steal Hollywood production, but to prevent runaway production that already goes out of the country from leaving the United States. Several production companies, especially made-for-TV movies, film in Canada because the favorable currency exchange rate gives producers more for their money.

Boosters of the film industry in Nevada say similar savings can occur for films shot in Nevada because labor and location costs are cheaper, the weather cooperates more often for location shooting and government leaders are eager to accommodate Hollywood for filming permits because the large production crews spend millions whenever they come to town.

S3's isn't the first or only bid to build a studio.

Marilee Lear began work on a studio that bears her name in an industrial park at Charleston Boulevard and Mojave Road. She has said she is fixing up a former frozen food warehouse into seven sound stages at a cost of about $19 million.

The high cost and a lack of financing has slowed progress, but Lear is content to move ahead slowly. Meanwhile, at least two Hollywood productions have used her facility even though it isn't completed.

Another effort to build a studio in Henderson failed when Doris Keating could not get the permits necessary to build her planned Black Mountain Studio.

And, a project known as Media City -- another elaborate master-planned facility with a hotel and a monorail transportation system -- is on hold while developers attempt to secure enough land to build it.

The Entertainment Development Corp. of Las Vegas, a nonprofit organization supporting the growth of the film industry in the city, is reluctant to endorse individual studio projects after being criticized for slow progress on the development of studio infrastructure here.

But Mimosa Jones, president and chief executive officer of the EDC, and Tim Quillen, the newly installed chairman of the organization, say they support the start S3 has made and plan to be at today's news conference introducing the studio project.