In the early 1980s, around the time George Lucas and Richard Marquand were wrapping up “Return of the Jedi” at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, the British film industry entered a precipitous decline.
As U.S.
funding dried up following new tax rules and a pivot to television, fewer films were made in the U.K.
than at any time since the beginning of World War I.The golden era of 1960s and ’70s production — when Stanley Kubrick shot “2001: A Space Odyssey” at Shepperton Studios, Richard Donner took over Pinewood Studios for “Superman” and Lucas handpicked Elstree for “Star Wars” — was over.“The British film industry hit rock bottom,” recalls Adrian Wootton, chief executive of Film London and the British Film Commission.
“Most of our filmmakers had left to go to America.
There was tumbleweed blowing through our studios.”Four decades on, the landscape is unrecognizable.
“[The U.K.
is] the movie capital of the world right now,
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