“We knew the textile business was on its way down,” said Amy Szabados, 28, a Torontonative, “and we really saw a possibility in the film industry.”

The result is the Stern Film Studio and Media Center, a two-complex, movie-making facility in the Village of Pomáz, north of Budapest, which is slated to open in the autumn. The Szabados’s could not have launched Stern at a better time.

A changing landscape

Since the Stern studio was first conceived, two developments have shaken up the Central European film development landscape, and could possibly turn Budapest into the moviemaking epicentre for the region, if not the continent – a virtual Euro-Hollywood. “It is amazing what is happening in Hungary,” declared John Harrington, a UK media executive who launched one of Hungary’s first commercial TV networks in the late 1990s. “Everything is changing.” At the beginning of this year, the Hungarian government passed a new film law, which offers unprecedented tax breaks to foreign movie-makers opting to shoot films on Hungarian soil – a 16 percent return on all expenditures incurred in Hungary and further savings if a Hungarian company is a co-producer in the project.

In its effort to turn Hungary into a filmfriendly nation, Hungarian lawmakers have also tinkered with investment statutes, which make it measurably more attractive for strategic investors to pump money into movie projects. But what registered on the Richter scale of movie-making news around the globe was a May announcement by István Hiller, Hungary’s Minister of Culture, that ground would soon be broken on the largest film studio in the world.

A FAMILY AFFAIR, Hungarian-Canadian entrepreneurs Robert and Amy Szabados

“We wish to create an appealing environment for international filmmakers,” he told an audience that included filmmakers, critics and movie industry reporters from across the globe.

Hiller’s decision announcing the Etyek studio development at this year’s Cannes Film Festival illustrates that the government and local industry are thinking strategically, and are determined to entice the world’s top movie moguls to the Carpathian basin, attracted by film laws and fancy studios. The culmination of the Etyek and Pomáz film studio developments came after the failure of another studio project spearheaded by Hungarian-born television mogul Robert Halmi Sr., Hallmark Entertainment Networks. In 2000, Halmi attempted to build a USD 5 million film production studio - which he planned to finance - outside Budapest in Fót.

But Halmi, who continues to produce films in Hungary, ran into a brick wall at the time in his attempts to garner the interest of the former government in developing a film production and studio system like the one being developed today.

The Vajna-Demján team

News of the mammoth studio developmentin the dusty Village of Etyek, located west of Budapest and until now known chiefly for its varieties of white wines, was overshadowed by the profiles of the two men behind the project. The first man is Sándor Demján, arguably Hungary’s richest and most revered real estate tycoon, who in the late 1990s partnered up with Canadian investors to build the largest shopping center in Central Europe at Budapest’s Nyugati Square. The other is Andrew Vajna, the Hollywood producer of blockbusters like “First Blood,” “Rambo: First Blood II,” “Rambo III,” “Terminator 3,” “Total Recall,” “Evita,” and others. Vajna has long been a source of inspiration and thinly-masked jealousy in Hollywood for producing many of the top moneymakers of the 1980s and 90s.

But as one of the first independent producers to take on the studio system and Hollywood establishment, Vajna is better known as a fearless maverick with a penchant for winning and losing fortunes, and turning long shots into successes.

But Hungary is not alone in its ambitions, making some analysts wonder whether these efforts are too little too late, even given the ambitious nature of the Vajna-Demján development. Prague’s decade-long success at parlaying low-costs, stunning scenery and ample communist-era studio space into Hollywood cash has inspired neighboring Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia to compete.

Competition abounds

The decision by director Anthony Minghella to shoot the Nicole Kidman film, “Cold Mountain,” in the crags of northern Romania proves there are cheaper places to make movies than the Czech Republic and Hungary. But even Romania will have to watch its back now that countries like Latvia and Serbia have thrown their hats in the ring. A major state-funded studio complex has just gone up in Riga, and Belgrade will reportedly be home to a studio development by UKbased production company, Grosvenor Park. Additionally, studios in Bulgaria and Croatia are now canvassing international filmmakers for production business, all touting themselves as the “New Prague.”

Others are also unsure about the viability of the new studio facilities. One high profile film producer, who wished to remain annonymous, questioned wether the Demján-Vajna project would make it off of the ground in the first place, claiming that, “studios themselves were never a lucrative business.” In addition, referring to the Pomáz development, our source questioned the lack of industry knowledge and peripheral services to make the project work.

Hungarian filmmakers, however, are far from worried. During the Hungarian film festival, long before the Etyek studio project was announced, producer László Sipos called the Hungarian Film Law a tour de force that alone would make Budapest the euro navel for film making. “The Czechs have nothing like this law,” he said.

What is more, Sipos sees the law as a magnet – rather than an incentive – for investment in the industry. According to Sipos, foreign producers stand to earn a 20 percent rebate on every penny spent on Hungarian soil. Furthermore, Hungarian companies can write off 100 percent of their investment for a Hungarian film or up to 20 percent of the total movie budget on a project they co-produce. “This is very smart,” said Sipos. “It means investing in a Hungarian film is better than the stock market for making money. You can’t lose.”

The studios going up in Etyek and Pomáz, combined with the newly passed film-friendly law has broadcasted a message across the cinema territories of Central and Eastern Europe: The Hungarian back-lot is open for business. These developments, moreover, have been nothing less than a declaration of war against Prague, which has serviced so many Hollywood movies in recent years (Bourne Identity, Hart’s War, Mission Impossible) that it was until recently the uncontested film capital of Central and Eastern Europe.

Vajna the maverick

Spearheading the Etyek project is Hungarianborn Vajna, who has taken a native son’s interest in nurturing the Hungarian movie industry mainly through his Budapest-based firm, InterCom, which he has built into one of Hungary’s top film distributors and cinema operators.

But looming over Vajna, Demján and the Szabados’s Stern Studio is a third figure -- a legend of the Hungarian, US and British movie industries, who ironically has been dead since 1956.

When mogul Andy Vajna’s participation in the Etyek studio was first announced, at least one journalist in Central Europe remembered Alexander Korda – the Hungarian producer, director and film-industry pioneer who built Budapest’s first studio complex early in the 20th century. Korda became a charter member of United Artists in Hollywood and eventually settled in London where he singlehandedly turned the British film industry into an international phenomenon. Korda was an old-style movie tycoon and risk-taker who reveled in mammoth projects – be it ambitious movies, massive studios or mismatched marriages.

Given this legacy, it was no surprise when Vajna and Demján announced that the Etyek development would be named “Korda Studios.”

The Korda connection

The spirit of Korda has also played an equally strong role in the launch of the Canadianowned Stern Film Studio. Amy Szabados is an ancestor of Korda through her maternal grandfather, and Korda’s brothers were the first family her grandparents and mother met after escaping communist Hungary in 1956, shortly after Korda’s death. Both Amy and her father credit the Korda legacy for inspiring them to build Stern studios and enter an industry that had long fascinated them.

“Film was always part of our family,” said Amy Szabados. “We were always big movie buffs. I guess sooner or later we knew we would be in the industry. We just weren’t sure how we were going to get there.” Although the Stern Film Studio and the Korda Studios will compete for productions, Robert Szabados says he sees no threat from the Etyek facility, which will contain special effects attractions like a massive water tank (in which Titanic-like movies can be produced) and will employ up to 2,000 technicians. “If Etyek comes true it is really going to be a great opportunity for filmmakers in Hungary,” said Robert Szabados.

In the planning

Szabados is making quite a racket himself. Although smaller than the movie complex planned for Etyek, Stern Film Studios will consist of two studios, the first 2,275 square meters and the second 1,500 square meters. There will also be ample space for equipment, tractor trailers and the crews that come with major modern-day theatrical productions. “Everything was thought of when we began planning,” said Amy Szabados. “We built [Stern] for major productions – for crews of 200 people and hundreds of vehicles.”

With its opening day only months away, Stern Studios is the realization of a dream for the Szabados family. And Robert Szabados has no doubt that his USD 2 million development, which he financed himself, will succeed with him and his daughter at the helm. Declared Szabados: “Film is in my daughter Amy’s blood.” And somewhere, Alexander Korda, blood ancestor to Amy Szabados and spiritual father to Andrew Vajna, may be smiling.