Pistol was filmed on the Six Acres estate

THE Town Hall cashed more than £750,000 from production companies making movies and TV series in a year, figures released to the Tribune reveal.

The money was raised from renting out streets and buildings to film crews, who are cementing the borough’s place as one of the most popular locations in the UK to shoot scenes.

During the financial year 2021 to 2022, the sums show that Islington made £785,634 as a number of productions set up for work.

These included the popular Gary Oldman Apple TV series Slow Horses, which had scenes filmed on the Caledonian estate in Caledonian Road, and the Danny Boyle film Pistol about the Sex Pistols, based on the Six Acres estate in Finsbury Park.

This figure is more than double the amount collected by Islington’s film department five years ago, when it made just under £300,000 in a year.

Other well-received recent productions made in the borough include the BBC Japanese crime drama Giri/Haji, the award-winning Netflix show The Crown, and Tom Cruise’s juggernaut Mission Impossible franchise. Fans of award-winning shows Black Mirror and Killing Eve could also spot Islington locations.

The borough’s most popular wards to film in, according to staff at Filmfixer, the company hired by Islington to coordinate all filming, are Bunhill and Clerkenwell.

In comparison, Westminster City Council received just under £350,000 over the same year, even though it had more productions filmed there.

Luke Wilson, senior film officer from the Islington Film Office based at Filmfixer, said in the past three or four years Islington had become “one of the most popular boroughs” to film in London, while the capital is also “one of the most filmed-in cities in the world”.

He said: “Location managers are increasingly seeing Islington as a film-friendly borough in terms of we work with many large-scale productions and they are successful. We work well with the community to create a smooth-running shoot with community benefits and resident engagement that’s taken place. I think that’s one reason it has become popular.

“But also the architecture of Islington. It’s a really diverse borough in terms of styles of buildings and streets. It has a whole variety of housing estates from different periods and different squares that have quite distinct architecture and you have a lot of consistent architecture, so it will be one particular style, and that can be appealing to directors if it paints an image of a certain time and place. Those are the main reasons it’s reputation as a film-friendly borough has increased.”

Film companies make a one-off payment to communities to compensate for the inconvenience of filming, which can lead to bright lights shining into residents’ bedrooms late into the night, or parking suspensions which leave drivers having to park further away from their homes.

In the past year, donations from film companies to community groups totalled more than £50,000.
Mr Wilson, who lives in Finsbury Park, said one of his favourite days of filming was when The Crown production transformed Worship Street, near Old Street, into a Hong Kong night-time scene.