China's largest filming base offers free studios for film/TV personnel

China's largest filming base - Hengdian World Studios - offers all its studios for free to film crews and teleplay crews since Tuesday, in a move to boost the country's film and TV industry.

Free studios are offered to crews working on modern, contemporary and sci-fi-themed TV series, the studio announced during a press conference on Tuesday. "This will save the production teams hundreds of millions yuan in terms of rentals," said Xu Tianfu, vice president of Hengdian Group Holdings Ltd.

With an area of over 30 square kilometers, Hengdian World Studios is perhaps the world's largest shooting center for films and television programs. A full-scale replica of the Forbidden City and Old Summer Palace and scores of palaces and gardens are among the most well-known antique-style architecture inside the center.

Established in 1996, the center located in east China's Zhejiang Province, has developed into an incubation hub for a quarter of China's movies and one-third of its TV series, with more than 64,000 episodes shot annually.

Currently there're 100 studios inside Hengdian and the number will be expanded to 200 within two to three years, according to Xu. Among them, a 12,000-square-meter studio, the world's largest, scheduled to be put into use in March 2020.

"More films and TV dramas now turn to studio shot rather than location shot as China's film industry develops," said Xu, "We hope we can provide better and more high-tech service for the crews.”