Brooklyn-born telecom entrepreneur Louis Arriola is building a state-of-the-art film-shooting facility in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. He says he will be adding to Pinewood Studios that has already established itself in the country and has international name recognition with its operation in Juan Dolio, a beach community about a 1:30 minutes drive west from Punta Cana.
“The more that Pinewood does and the more that we do, we bring attention [from] around the world,” he said of his intention to turn the Dominican Republic into a global film production hub, as reported by Hollywood Reporter.
Arriola made a name for himself with VoIP provider LDI Networks, and then in 2015 branched out into entertainment and is producing for Netflix through his NYLA Media Group. Now NYLA has begun construction of a US$100 million, state-of-the-art film studio and a 5G network in Punta Cana, along with housing and training for entertainment tradespeople. 56-year old Arriola is working to establish Punta Cana as a competitor for production, gaming and data operations for the Caribbean and all of Latin America.
Arriola explained to Hollywood Reporter that vertical integration is the name of the game for the company, which is designing its IP to exist across multiple platforms, from games to movies and series, and to stream at least in part through Arriola’s telecom venture and in-the-works 5G network.
Arriola’s telecom business is doing well in the Dominican Republic. He says he chose the Dominican Republic as homebase because of tax incentives and because of the homegrown talent.
The 26-acre film studio will be located on a 80-acre lot. The company is building a two-lane highway across the land to be able to have trucks go up and down the highway to Verón. As part of the complex is the construction of 2,100 homes to sell to workers of Verón at low cost. He says they expect to be up and running in the first quarter of 2020.
He explained the plans are for two types of projects: lower-budget, local-language films for the Latin American market and higher-budget features for the international market. He says there has been a shift in Spanish-language TV from soap operas to a different type of storytelling or Lifetime Channel-type movies. Higher budget productions would be US projects to be filmed in the DR for international release.
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Hollywood Reporter
20 May 2019