Chrysaor Studios, Australia’s first Social Traders certified social enterprise film studio, has published an unvarnished account of its first six months of trading at Varsity Lakes on the Gold Coast, including the fact that it has no confirmed bookings for the balance of 2026.
The full account is here: https://www.chrysaor.com.au/post/gold-coast-film-studio-six-months-call-for-help
Since opening its doors, the studio has had 47 on-site visits and events since April, 40 of which were producer tours, walkthroughs and recces. It has hosted nine productions and activations, including work for Werner Film Productions, The Onset Productions and WildBear Entertainment. More than 150 practitioners attended its Gold Coast Virtual Production Showcase in July, from 202 registrations. Twenty-one Gold Coast and Queensland businesses sit on its preferred supplier list, and every production the studio hosts is pointed at that list first.
It currently has 66 live conversations with producers across Australia, covering low-budget independent features, music videos, short films, simulation travel work and its own in-house projects. There are pencilled dates. Not one is a confirmed booking.
Of the productions the studio has hosted, one was led by a Queensland producer.
“I am publishing this because we are a social enterprise and I said I would be straight about how the business is really going,” said Christopher Amos, Founder and CEO of Chrysaor Studios. “This is not a story about one studio struggling. Forty producer tours in six months show the interest is there. What is missing is the money that turns a development project into a shoot. Every one of those conversations is a producer who cannot get to a start date.”
The studio was built with support from Screen Queensland’s Capital Grants Program, matched by the company’s own investment, and opened for bookings in April 2026. It houses a soundstage, the Gold Coast’s only permanent open-access LED volume, production offices and a crew base, and has run student and emerging practitioner placements. Its Social Traders certification was established through a Creative Business Plus program funded by Screen Rights, and its social value has been measured using the Australian Social Value Bank methodology.
Amos argues the position is a warning for a city whose screen economy depends on work commissioned elsewhere, mainly from overseas, at the same moment the United States is considering a federal production tax credit, the Miami Arts Depot creative precinct is taking shape minutes from the studio on the Gold Coast, and Shadowbox Studios is proposed for Yatala.
“International productions built this city and they should keep coming. Every one of them trains crew, pays local suppliers and adds to the infrastructure the next production will use. It is the reason the Gold Coast can do this work at all. What we do not have is a strong second lane. Incentives move, and they have moved this year. Trained crew and permanent infrastructure do not. If more of what we shoot here is also owned here, the crews keep working when the international slate slows, and the international productions return to a deeper industry than they left. And that compounds year on year, all the way to 2032 Games.”
The studio is proposing a Gold Coast screen industry leaders gathering in October to work on a local intellectual property strategy.
