A new feature directed by George Clooney will be the first production to use Stage Fifty”s new Winnersh Film Studios in Berkshire.

The Boys in the Boat, co-directed by Clooney”s producing partner at Smokehouse Pictures, Grant Heslov, will shoot in the spring, with Callum Turner reportedly set to star.

From MGM and Smokehouse Pictures, the film is based on the 2013 novel by Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It explores the events of 1936 when the University of Washington men”s rowing team, as the event”s clear underdogs, astonished the world by taking the gold medal. The current screenplay is from Mark L Smith.

It seems Clooney has got his wish in terms of location: in an article in Baz Bamigboye”s Daily Mail column in December 2021, the A-lister quipped that he hoped to shoot the rowing scenes “at the bottom of my garden” – the star has a home in Sonning, Berkshire, on the Thames.

Winnersh Film Studios is the second film studio to be opened by Stage Fifty, with Farnborough Film Studios having opened last year.

The latter has already hosted filming on two major Hartwood Films dramas, Inside Man and The Devil”s Hour, both of which shot at Farnborough from June last year.

Stage Fifty subsequently announced that it was naming one of its two 22,000 sq ft sound stages at Farnborough after the production company, with that space now to be known as Hartswood Stage in honour of the inaugural tenancy.

Photo by Rich Polk – © 2017 Getty Images – Image courtesy gettyimages.com.