A bid to build a major film studio in Glasgow has been formally rejected by the body established by the government to deliver a facility for Scotland.
It is now understood that the new studio bid being pursued by the Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise is in Cumbernauld, next to or part of the studio used by the Outlander TV series.
Film industry sources confirmed last night that the Cumbernauld location where the major US show is based - yet to be shown in the UK - will be the site where a new studio, backed by public cash, will be based.
Yesterday Scottish Enterprise said they were working on a deal with a mystery bid which could be signed in eight weeks, without revealing where the facility would be based.
Meanwhile, Gillian Berrie, the leading film producer and head of Sigma Films, confirmed last night that Film City's bid to build a studio in the Govan area of Glasgow had been rejected.
Last night she said she was troubled and disappointed by the way the Film City bid for a studio had been handled.
She said: "We were verbally informed that our proposal would not be taken forward - 30 mins before Fiona Hyslop appeared before the [Parliament] inquiry yesterday.
"That four years of hard work, research, advocacy and consultation by Film City can been be distilled into a short 'thanks but no thanks' meeting, minutes before a major government inquiry, is very troubling.
"Equally disappointing was the fact that our meeting was convened with the pretext of SE being 'keen to explore some of the ideas you have suggested in recent media articles'."
She added: "Pacific Quay provides phenomenal opportunity, near a city-centre where it has the automatic and guaranteed support of infrastructure, accommodation, the metrics of place, connectivity and accessibility, where sustainability can be fully realised.
"We believe location is absolutely critical to its cultural and economic success.
"Others agree - a recent petition was signed by the likes of Ewan Macgregor, Jack O'Connell, Peter Mullan and more than 1600 people from within the industry in support of bringing our studio vision to Glasgow."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article