• Swindon & Wiltshire Culture
• Wednesday August 6 2025

Are Trump’s tariffs to blame for Bottle Yard Studios sale collapse?

Bristol City Council is struggling to sell Bottle Yard Studios – the film studio complex it owns. And a prominent politician from across the pond might be to blame.

In October, the council announced it was putting the Hengrove studio – the largest in the South West – up for sale.

The BBC, ITV and international streamers including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV, HBO, and Paramount + have all made movies and series there – a boon for the city’s film and TV industry.

But recently the council was forced to admit that the deal with its preferred bidder had fallen through.

In recent years the film and TV industry has served Bristol well.

The latest figures from Bristol Film Office show that film and High End TV production at The Bottle Yard Studios and on location in Bristol was worth more than £46 million per year to Bristol’s economy last year – marking a 55 per cent increase in the positive economic impact compared to the previous 12 months.

But the entertainment industry here and in the States have been experiencing a bad case of the wobbles since Donald Trump made a tariff announcement on the social media platform he owns, Truth Social, in May.

“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated,” he wrote, in typically bombastic fashion.

“This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!

“Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.

“WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”

In a statement about the collapse of the sale, councillor Tony Dyer, chair of the strategy and resources committee at Bristol City Council, said: “I’m grateful to officers who have engaged with and undertaken the detailed process of taking the studios to market and negotiating on a potential sale with bidders.

“This has been a necessarily lengthy process to ensure all possible factors are considered and that an extensive level of due diligence is carried out throughout.

“In the absence of an agreement being reached I have asked that officers conduct a further appraisal of the options for maximising the value and benefits of the studios before returning to our committee with further recommendations.

“We entered into this process with the objective of securing a sustainable future for the studios and the opportunity to grow into its huge potential.

“Those aims remain the same as does our determination to ensure that one of our city’s most successful regeneration projects continues an upward trajectory to deliver more jobs and more investment for Bristol.”