Netflix In Final Talks to Buy Radford Studio Lot at Around $330 Million Price Tag
Netflix is nearing a deal to buy the historic Radford Studio Center lot, a purchase that would give the entertainment giant ownership of a major Los Angeles production campus. Goldman Sachs, which took over the property earlier this year, is expected to sell the property for roughly $330 million, a source familiar with the deal…
Netflix is nearing a deal to buy the historic Radford Studio Center lot, a purchase that would give the entertainment giant ownership of a major Los Angeles production campus.
Goldman Sachs, which took over the property earlier this year, is expected to sell the property for roughly $330 million, a source familiar with the deal tells The Hollywood Reporter, describing the agreement as “all but done.”
According to the source, Netflix didn’t participate in the first round of bids, which didn’t include other major studios and started roughly two months ago. Offers, most of which didn’t hit $300 million, were mostly submitted by entities looking for what could be a generational discount on the 55-acre property.
The sale is the first deal of its kind involving a major production campus in more than five years. It’s expected to set a baseline for lenders to rely on when renewing loans for comparable properties. “This is going to set the bar,” the source adds.
The buy could shake up Netflix’s base of operations in Los Angeles. For years, it has been the anchor tenant at Sunset Studios, making the ICON building its L.A. headquarters and occupying the EPIC and CUE buildings as part of the complex on Sunset Boulevard.
The streaming giant has a lease on those buildings through 2031 with the owner, Hudson Pacific Properties, which receives $27 million in base annualized rent from Netflix. As of early March, Hudson Pacific CEO Victor Coleman said at an investor conference that “our conversations with them are fluid” regarding future leases.
Netflix is the No. 2 tenant for Hudson Pacific among its office tenants, occupying 722,305 square feet of space, just behind Google, so a loss of the streaming giant would be a big one for the soundstage operator. (Amazon is its No. 3 tenant, and the company also has tech giants like Salesforce, PayPal and Elon Musk’s X AI leasing its properties.)
“We remain fully engaged with Netflix and believe this portfolio is the optimal long-term solution for their L.A. office needs, given the quality, location and expansion potential of these assets,” Coleman had said on the company’s February earnings call.
Netflix leases its Sunset Bronson Studios location (pictured during the 2023 labor strikes).
Tiffany Taylor/THR Staff
Radford, meanwhile, counts iconic titles like Seinfeld and Gilligan’s Island among the classic shows that have filmed on its soundstages. But even in corporate materials it describes itself as facing “decades of under-investment,” and renovation plans have been put in motion.
The historic studio was in the hands of the then-named ViacomCBS corp until 2021 when it was sold — as part of a slimming down of the Shari Redstone-run Paramount empire — to Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management for $1.85 billion.
The Michael Hackman-led firm had bet that studio infrastructure would be a hot commodity as majors had been bulking up on spending for streaming shows near the height of what was then a race to catch up to Netflix. Wall Street and private equity firms also saw the upside in studio lot infrastructure at the time, which was not too far removed from the COVID-19 pandemic, when office space was seen as a shakier bet.
Then, ahead of the 2023 dual labor strikes from the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, the content spend pullback hit and stage occupancy started waning. (Now uncertainty about how AI workflows will impact content creation also factor in to big bets on soundstage infrastructure.)
Netflix could strike the deal as the value of L.A. studio real estate plunges amid a historic production slump in the region. Major soundstages recorded a 62 percent occupancy rate during the first six months of 2025, down one percent from anemic levels recorded in 2024, according to data released from local film office FilmLA in March. From 2016 to 2022, soundstages participating in the survey reported an average occupancy rate of at least 90 percent.
The filming downturn hit Radford, which has 22 soundstages, especially hard since fixed operating costs remain the same regardless of how many productions shoot on the property.
A green screen on set at the Radford lot in Studio City circa 2018.
Photographed By Yuri Hasegawa
Investment bank Goldman Sachs had taken over the Radford lot after Hackman defaulted on its mortgage, Bloomberg reported in January, citing a letter to investors that wasn’t made public. Hackman also operates the historic Raleigh Studios in Los Angeles, the Sony Pictures Animation Campus in Culver City and more major soundstages and production facilities.
Last year Hackman put a “For Sale” sign on a Raleigh sibling location, Saticoy Studios in Van Nuys, at an$18 millionprice tag, with an exec at the company telling THR that it was “non-core to our wider studio portfolio, which focuses on larger, flagship properties.” The main Raleigh Studios location, located on Melrose Avenue, has Netflix as the anchor tenant through 2031 as well.
That would mean that by 2031, Netflix may be able to be on the move at both Sunset and Raleigh studios should it choose to do so. And a Radford lot purchase — it boasts 22 soundstages, three backlot sets, 18 office buildings and 20 bungalows — could make for suitable new digs for Ted Sarandos and Co. in L.A. to go along with its restored Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Blvd.
Netflix, which just received a $2.8 billion break up fee in connection with its abandoned pursuit of Warner Bros., has made an effort to build its soundstage bases over the years, outside of its L.A. office. Those include the formerly named ABQ Studios in Albuquerque, New Mexico as well as $1 billion to build its East coast base at the former site of Fort Monmouth, New Jersey (which won’t be ready for a few years).
That’s not counting the Los Gatos-based company’s expanding global office and studio space portfolio. This year alone, Netflix unveiled its Mexico City headquarters, opened a Buenos Aires, Argentina office and touted an expansion of its Poland central European hub as it builds infrastructure to provide a content pipeline to serve its 325 million subscribers.
Sunset Studios soundstage operator Hudson Pacific, meanwhile, has looked to the East coast for an expansion, opening its purpose-built Sunset Pier 94 Studios in Manhattan in January with Paramount Television Studios’ Dexter: Resurrection signing on to produce its second season at the location.
April 22 Story updated throughout with additional reporting.
