Universal Officially Moving Forward With U.K. Theme Park & Resort; Construction To Begin In 2026
Just one month before it is set to open its highly-anticipated Epic Universe expansion in Orlando, Universal Destinations & Experiences announced today that it will proceed with previously-teased plans to build a new theme park in the United Kingdom.
In June of last year, UDX announced it was carrying out feasibility and due diligence studies and was set to make a final decision on the project by the end of this year. Today's announcement is the result of that process.
More from Deadline
Epic Universe: Fans Get A Look Inside Universal Orlando Resort's Ambitious New Park
New Epic Universe Ticket Packages Unveiled For Universal Orlando Resort
CinemaCon 2025: Here's What Worked & Didn't Work
The UK project is subject to securing planning approval. A proposal along those lines will be submitted to UK Government in the months ahead with a projected construction start date in 2026.
The theme park unit of Comcast subsidiary NBCUniversal announced in December 2023 that it had acquired the 476-acre site for a proposed new UK location outside the town of Bedford, some 60 miles northwest of London. See map below.
'This is a special and historic milestone moment for our company as we continue to accelerate the growth trajectory of our theme parks business and delight audiences around the world,' said Mike Cavanagh, President of Comcast Corporation. 'The unparalleled storytelling and technological innovation that the incredible team at Universal Destinations & Experiences brings to life is a perfect complement to the British creative arts and tourism industries.'
The project is expected to deliver £50B of direct and indirect benefit in the UK, which translates to just shy of $64B. That includes 20,000 construction jobs over the next few years as well as 8,000 posts once the site was operational. See fact sheet below.
'Bringing the Universal brand to the United Kingdom is another exciting step forward in generating future growth,' said Mark Woodbury, Chairman and CEO of Universal Destinations & Experiences. 'Expanding into Europe presents us with a significant opportunity to reach new fans and share the incredible experiences our team creates.'
Best of Deadline
2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery
2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More
Brad Pitt's Apple 'F1' Movie: Everything We Know So Far
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Watch a star-studded 'Hamilton' performance at the 2025 Tony Awards
Broadway's biggest stars got to be, once again, in the room where it happened. To mark the 10th anniversary of the breakout production, nearly 30 members of the original "Hamilton" cast reunited on the Tony's stage Sunday night to perform some of the show's biggest hits. Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda was joined by Leslie Odom Jr., Jonathan Groff, Daveed Diggs and others for a medley of songs that drew raucous cheers from the crowd at Radio City Music Hall on June 8. With numbers like "My Shot," "The Schuyler Sisters" and "The Room Where It Happens," the ensemble invoked the historical tension of a colonial America with soaring melodies and witty rhymes, reminding the audience why "Hamilton" became a smash in the first place. Jonathan Groff opens up about death, Bobby Darin and why he's done with birthday wishes A lively, hip-hop-infused take on early American history, "Hamilton" has become a cultural phenomenon, catapulting both Odom and Miranda from Broadway performers to bona fide Hollywood stars. Premiering at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre in August 2015 to widespread critical acclaim, it went on to win a whopping 11 Tony Awards, including best musical. A filmed version of the show starring the original cast debuted on Disney+ in 2020. Set with a multi-racial cast, and heavily influenced by rap and hip-hop, the show reimagines the making of America, weaving in the very people its founding document was penned to leave out. Cole Escola makes Tony Awards history as first nonbinary best leading actor in a play Who won the Tonys? One musical certainly had a standout night. "Maybe Happy Ending," Will Aronson and Hue Park's musical on two "helperbots" and their journey of friendship, love and adventure, swept the awards with six wins, which included prizes for best musical, best original score, best book of a musical and best scenic design of a musical. See the full list of winners here. Miranda's revived Tonys performance comes as the production opted to remove shows at the Kennedy Center in the wake of a conservative rebrand under President Donald Trump. "Political disagreement and debate are vital expressions of democracy. These basic concepts of freedom are at the very heart of 'Hamilton,'" show producer Jeffrey Seller wrote in a statement in March. "However, some institutions are sacred and should be protected from politics. The Kennedy Center is one such institution." In February, Trump announced a massive overhaul at the Kennedy Center that included the termination of multiple board of trustees members and Chairman David Rubenstein. Installing himself as the new chairman, Trump cited the center's decision to host drag show performances at its venue as the reason for the changes in a Truth Social post earlier this year. Contributing: Savannah Kuchar, Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, Joey Garrison, USA TODAY This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Hamilton' Tony Awards 2025 performance reunites cast
Yahoo
44 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Frederick Forsyth, Author of ‘The Day of the Jackal,' Dies at 86
Frederick Forsyth, the internationally acclaimed British author whose talent for page-turning thrillers provided the fodder for such films as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War and The Fourth Protocol, died Monday. He was 86. Forsyth died at his home in Buckinghamshire, England, his literary agency Curtis Brown announced. More from The Hollywood Reporter Billy Bob Thornton Says He Didn't Expect 'Landman' to Be "This Successful" and Teases Season 2 Pippa Scott, Actress in 'The Searchers' and 'Auntie Mame,' Dies at 90 Arthur Hamilton, "Cry Me a River" Songwriter, Dies at 98 The journalist turned novelist, who saw his share of derring-do as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, was one of the most influential authors of his genre. He excited his fans for four decades, weaving topical subject matter and political machinations with edge-of-your-seat action. To do so, he used only a typewriter. No computers for him. 'I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again,' he told the BBC in 2008. 'And have you ever tried to hack into my typewriter? It is very secure.' Forsyth hit it big right out of the gate in 1971 with The Day of the Jackal, a chilling political drama about a relentless English assassin, known only as The Jackal, hired by the OAS to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle in 1963. In need of quick money, Forsyth drew inspiration from his first assignment as a journalist for Reuters. 'Jackal was all prepared in my head, as I had lived through being a foreign correspondent in Paris in 1962-63,' Forsyth told Publishers Weekly in 2018. 'The OAS was on the threshold of assassinating the president of France. Even at the time, I didn't think they would succeed unless they hired a real pro with a sniper rifle. Seven years later, I went back to that thought. I didn't do any preparation and wrote off the top of my head, producing 10 pages per day over 35 days, which became a novel. The only thing I researched was how to forge a British passport.' An immediate success, The Day of the Jackal spent seven weeks at No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller List throughout October and November in 1971. The following year, he received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. In 1973, a Universal Pictures' adaptation, directed by Fred Zinnemann from a screenplay by Kenneth Ross, hit the big screen, with Edward Fox as the enigmatic title character. It grossed more than $16 million at the domestic box office as one of the top-grossing films of the year. (Remakes in 1997 and last year featured Bruce Willis and Eddie Redmayne as the assassin, respectively.) Forsyth's follow-up, 1972's The Odessa File, topped the Times list in 1973 for five weeks. Also set in 1963, it follows German reporter Peter Miller as he hunts for concentration camp commander Eduard Roschmann (a real SS commander Forsyth fictionalized in the book). In the process, Miller uncovers and infiltrates a secret organization — code-named Odessa — made up of former SS members. 'People had Jewish friends, good friends; Jewish employers, good employers; Jewish employees, hard workers. They obeyed the laws, they didn't hurt anyone. And here was Hitler saying they were to blame for everything,' reads one passage from the book. 'So when the vans came and took them away, people didn't do anything. They stayed out of the way, they kept quiet. They even got to believing the voice that shouted the loudest. Because that's the way people are, particularly the Germans. We're a very obedient people. It's our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. It enables us to build an economic miracle while the British are on strike, and it enables us to follow a man like Hitler into a great big mass grave.' Deftly blending elements of intrigue and suspense with an acute attention to historical detail, The Odessa File shed light on Nazi war criminals who had eluded justice. Several years after the book's release, Roschmann, whose Holocaust atrocities had earned him the nickname 'The Butcher of Riga,' was apprehended in Argentina, where he had been in exile for decades. The Odessa File was adapted at Columbia Pictures in 1974, with Jon Voight as Miller and Maximilian Schell as Roschmann. His 1974 novel The Dogs of War, about a band of mercenaries tasked with killing the president of an African country, became a 1980 film directed by John Irvin and starring Christopher Walken. The Fourth Protocol, first published in 1984 and another Times top seller, was turned into a 1987 movie starring Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan; it's about a Cold War plot by Soviet Union outliers to plant a nuclear bomb near an American airbase. In 2016, Forsyth announced he was retiring from the world of fiction, saying his wife would no longer allow him to travel to adventurous places, but he returned to the world of intrigue with the cyber spy novel The Fox in 2018. All along, he kept his hand in the newspaper world, writing a column for the U.K.'s Daily Express well into his 80s. 'I consider myself a journalistic writer, keeping to the facts and making sure they are accurate,' Forsyth said in a 2015 interview with Crimespree Magazine. 'I do not write much emotional stuff or fancy language. My books were all contemporary current affairs based on what I had seen. Hell, I made mistakes and have done so many things, I chose to write about them, or maybe not.' Frederick McCarthy Forsyth was born on Aug. 25, 1938, in Ashford, Kent, England. His parents, Frederick and Phyllis, were shopkeepers. As he explained in 2010, Forsyth initially had little interest in his chosen craft. 'When I was a kid, I had only one overweening ambition,' he said. 'And it derived from the fact that when I was a 2-year-old, I remember staring up at what seemed like silver fish whirling and twirling in the sky, leaving contrails of white vapor. I was watching the Battle of Britain, and in my tiny little baby way, I wanted to be a pilot.' After attending the Tonbridge School in Kent and the University of Granada in Spain, Forsyth got his wish. At 19, he joined the Royal Air Force, where he piloted the de Havilland Vampire fighter jet. With aviator checked off his to-do list, Forsyth set out to see the world. As a foreign correspondent for Reuters and then the BBC, he traveled to such locales as France, East Germany and Nigeria. His time in Nigeria led to his first book. Published in 1969, The Biafra Story: The Making of an African Legend was an account of the 1967-70 Nigerian Civil War. His other books included 1979's The Devil's Alternative, 1989's The Negotiator, 1994's The Fist of God, 1996's Icon, 2003's Avenger and 2010's The Cobra. (Icon and Avenger became TV movies starring Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliott, respectively.) Forsyth also dabbled in television, most notably as the writer and presenter of the 1989 London Weekend Television series Frederick Forsyth Presents. In 2010, he dipped his toe into theater, contributing to the book for Love Never Dies, a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera featuring music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was loosely based on his 1999 novel, The Phantom of Manhattan. In 1997, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire to commemorate his contribution to literature. His memoir, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue, was published in 2015. Survivors include his sons, Stuart and Shane, from his 1973-88 marriage to model Carol Cunningham. His second wife, Sandy, whom he wed in 1994, died in October. 'A journalist should never join the establishment, no matter how tempting the blandishments. It is our job to hold power to account, not join it,' Forsyth said during his Crimespree interview. 'In a world that increasingly obsesses over the gods of power, money and fame, a journalist and a writer must remain detached, like a bird on a rail, watching, noting, probing, commenting, but never joining. In short, an outsider.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025 Hollywood's Highest-Profile Harris Endorsements: Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen and More
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Ruthless Ending of ‘The Penguin' Makes a Potential Season 2 'More Difficult,' Says Colin Farrell
A frigid environment is befitting of a television show titled The Penguin, but the chilly conditions of its set had no bearing on the story being told. It was simply the manner in which series lead Colin Farrell preserved the three hours' worth of prosthetic makeup needed to transform him into Oswald 'The Penguin' Cobb. 'I was totally encased as Oz, and it was incredibly hot underneath all the prosthetics,' recalls Farrell. More from The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood Flashback: The Moment 'SNL' Started Sweeping the Guest Acting Awards Inside Cynthia Erivo's Tonys Afterparty: "I Think We Should All Dance Now" 'Hamilton' Original Cast Reunites for Tony Awards Medley - Watch Between the 2 pounds of silicone rubber fastened to his head and a 30-pound bodysuit, the Irish actor was constantly overheating while playing his ambitious Gotham City gangster. There was even a stretch in the winter of 2023 where the eight-episode HBO series' New York City-area soundstage had the air conditioning cranked full blast, prompting the crew to don winter attire indoors. Eventually, the team set up a camping tent nicknamed 'the Igloo' for Farrell to cool off in between setups and takes. 'We had three industrial air conditioners funnel freezing cold air into it,' he says of the situation, adding, 'It wasn't fair that the crew had to [previously] wear fucking snow-goose expedition coats and scarves.' Farrell's iteration of the storied baddie originated in Matt Reeves' The Batman (2022), which kick-started its own 'Elseworlds' crime saga, without any connection to the shared DC universe that DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran have since rebooted. Reeves, as well as the feature script he co-authored with Peter Craig, provided prosthetic designer Mike Marino with the basic parameters for the appearance of Oz (played by Farrell), one that became a rougher-around-the-edges take on Tony Soprano, but with the underlying desperation of Fredo Corleone, and some birdlike features to honor Oz's unwelcome moniker. Marino and a half dozen of his fellow artists transformed Farrell roughly 90 times over the course of The Penguin, three times the amount of sessions they'd completed on The Batman. And despite headlines to the contrary, Marino insists that the leading man reveled in the 150- to 200-step makeup process that often began at 2 a.m. 'There are a couple of interviews where Colin said, 'Oh my God, I hated it,' but he's just bullshitting. He loved it. We had so much fun doing it, and he's the perfect person to wear makeup,' states Marino, something Farrell reaffirms. 'It was a beautiful time, to be honest. I've never felt such little total ownership over a character as I do over Oz, because of the village that came together to bring him to life.' Knowing Farrell was keen to dive deeper into his Batman supporting character, HBO Max put the spinoff series into development during the pandemic-era streaming boom. Showrunner Lauren LeFranc was tasked by executive producer Reeves to create a bridge to the upcoming The Batman Part II and turn one of the most recognizable villains from Batman's rogues gallery into a relatively sympathetic protagonist (until he isn't). That meant introducing the audience to Oz's minuscule inner circle, composed first and foremost of his dementia-stricken mother, Francis Cobb (Deirdre O'Connell). 'The key to any character I write is finding empathy, and that really started with Oz's mother. It made a lot of sense to me that he would have a very complicated relationship with her,' says LeFranc. 'He's desperate for acceptance from the masses, but predominantly, he's striving to find acceptance and love from his mother.' LeFranc also established his season-long sidekick, Victor 'Vic' Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz), after Vic and four other teenagers attempt to steal the rims off Oz's plum Maserati. Vic, who lost his family a week earlier when the Riddler (Paul Dano) bombed Gotham City's seawall, attempts to explain himself, but his stutter interferes. Oz, having his own disability, appears to feel some degree of compassion for the 17-year-old orphan. 'I hadn't gotten to see a lot of vulnerable characters like Victor in a crime drama or a genre comic book show. I'm half-Mexican, and I wanted a character that came from a loving half-Mexican, half-Dominican family,' LeFranc shares. Oz then recognizes an opportunity to audition Vic as a jack-of-all-trades amid his bid to grab power following the Riddler's murder of Gotham's most notorious crime lord (and Oz's boss), Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), in The Batman. His first assignment is to help Oz move the body of Carmine's son, Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen), whom Oz rashly murdered after the heir apparent to the Falcone crime family mocked Oz's desire to be remembered like a neighborhood mobster from his youth. The crew's department heads had their own unique challenge in both re-creating and expanding the Gotham City of Reeves' Liverpool-shot Batman feature on a TV schedule and budget in New York City. Fortunately, there was synergy between the productions, starting with Reeves and the film's DP Greig Fraser, who provided Craig Zobel, director of Penguin episodes one through three, with tech specs for camera gear, lenses and lighting. Production designer Kalina Ivanov and visual effects supervisor Johnny Han also received assets from their Batman counterparts to help reconstruct sets like the Iceberg Lounge using VFX. Han went through all the dailies for The Batman and found shots of the Oz-run nightclub to use as plates, as in an image that can be used to replace a greenscreen backdrop. 'Dan Lemmon, a VFX supervisor on The Batman, also gave me a mini-backstory on every visual effects shot from the movie. It was such a nice handing of the torch,' says Han. The Batman (Robert Pattinson) oversees Gotham from above, and so Reeves and LeFranc decided that the Penguin would attempt to rule the underworld from below. 'They wanted to make The French Connection, which immediately grounded the project under bridges, overpasses and elevated subway tracks,' Ivanov says. 'We also went for very unusual geography, so we stayed away from Manhattan as much as we could.' If Oz was going to serve as a temporary protagonist, then the limited series needed a primary antagonist who could admirably go toe to toe with him, and that's where Cristin Milioti's Sofia Falcone enters the equation. Growing up in New Jersey, Milioti played make-believe as Batman villains in her backyard, so she immediately became enamored with the role of Sofia and understood the high bar that's been set by Gotham, New Jersey's many colorful villains. 'I've wanted to play a Batman villain my whole life,' says Milioti. 'There was a constant pressure — that was also very self-inflicted — to do it justice.' Sofia spent the last decade in Arkham Asylum after confronting her father, Carmine (portrayed by Mark Strong on The Penguin), about his complicity in her mother's staged suicide. Her then-driver, Oz, had already blown the whistle to the mob boss about his daughter's interactions with a member of the press, and so Carmine framed his daughter for the reporter's corresponding death and several other of his serial killings as 'The Hangman.' Tragically, the charitable woman who entered Arkham against her will left as someone else due to unnecessary electroshock therapy and generally inhumane circumstances. Upon release, one of her first orders of business was to slaughter the extended Falcone mob who aided Carmine's wrongful conviction of her. 'One of the worst feelings in the world is the feeling of being disposable, and that's what happens to Sofia on such a massive level,' says Milioti. 'I hoped that the audience would be on her side when she blossoms into this full villain because you really understand why she does what she does.' Helen Shaver — who directed Sofia's origin story and present-day takeover of her father's crime ring in the John McCutcheon-penned fourth episode 'Cent'Anni' — says the filming of the rather harrowing chapter was the polar opposite of what one might expect. 'The opportunity to make that terrible betrayal by Oz and Carmine the bedrock from which this iconic character grows was very joyful,' Shaver shares. 'As great as the Penguin is, Sofia makes him a greater character.' To make matters worse for Sofia, the one person who refuses to turn their back on her, her brother, Alberto, disappears. Despite initially suspecting that Oz was involved, his subsequent death is pinned on the rival Maroni family, courtesy of Oz and Victor's machinations, in the series premiere. Moments before her grisly discovery of Alberto's body, Sofia tortures an unclothed Oz, which tested Marino's team to the nth degree, significantly upping the already three-hour prosthetic application time. 'The daytime is the hardest difficulty for a prosthetic. Any flaws can be seen in daylight,' recalls Marino. 'Colin was wearing this totally naked suit that's covered in hair and scars, and he was sweating in a burning hot greenhouse while tied up to a chair. It was the most challenging day.' Oz's opening chess move involving Alberto began an all-out war for control of Gotham's drug market with ever-changing alliances. Sofia eventually receives confirmation that Oz murdered her brother, and based on a tip from Oz's lover, Eve (Carmen Ejogo), she abducts Francis for leverage. Oz had previously pretended his mother was dead in order to protect her from the type of blowback that comes with his affiliations. With the help of Sofia's Arkham ally Dr. Rush (Theo Rossi), she gleans through Francis that Oz was responsible for the deaths of his older and younger brothers, Jack and Benny, in 1988. Oz is then forced to face the truth or else Sofia will maim his mother, but he still wouldn't come clean, leading Francis to stab him in the gut and forsake him before suffering a catastrophic stroke. 'Sofia understands that the gravest injury you can administer to someone is mental because you can't escape that,' says Milioti. Frustrated by his brothers' insensitivity to his clubfoot during a fateful game of hide-and-seek, Young Oz's lack of impulse control factored into his decision to trap Jack and Benny in a water overflow tunnel. This is the same impulsivity that led him to murder Alberto Falcone three-plus decades later. Farrell knows Young Oz is responsible for the demise of his brothers, but he offers him some benefit of the doubt, at least until he allows hours to go by without sounding the alarm to his mother. 'I'm not excusing him, don't get me wrong, but he wasn't an architectural fucking engineer when he was 10,' says Farrell. 'I don't think he necessarily knew that, in closing one sewer gate, it was going to be hermetically sealed and the water was going to rise twenty feet, killing his brothers.' Reeling from his mother's newly persistent vegetative state and how Sofia exposed his Achilles' heel through her, Oz decides that family of any kind is only going to hold him back from achieving true kingpin status. Thus, in the series' most gut-wrenching moment, he strangles Victor to death just after the young man expressed gratitude for their found family. 'He's always been this man. We've just been a little bit forgiving of him,' says LeFranc. 'When Oz kills Victor, it's like he's ripping his own heart out, and it's appalling. There's no justification for it. I hope that it leaves the audience to question why we ever trusted a man like this.' Farrell, despite being 'nowhere close' to starting prep work, will next reprise his character in the long-gestating The Batman Part II. He also notes it would be hard to reposition Oz as a protagonist in a potential Penguin season two after ruthlessly murdering the pure-hearted Victor and contributing to his own mother's unresponsiveness. 'I certainly think it makes [a second season] more difficult. [Killing Vic] is a very hard thing to claw back from,' says Farrell. 'It's not impossible, but it's a tougher hill to climb.' As for the physical impact the show had on him, one of the somewhat overlooked details in Farrell's performance is his Penguin-like waddle because of Oz's clubbed right foot. Farrell had to wear a supportive leg brace for full effect. 'I wasn't as smart as I could have been, which is not the first time I've said that in relation to work or life,' jokes Farrell. 'I did have some issues with my hips for a while, and my pelvis was a bit out of line, but I sorted it out afterward.' In an era where the limited series is cheekily referred to as the new pilot, Milioti is excited about her character's still-undetermined future, whether that's a Penguin season two, The Batman Part II or a Sofia-led series that explores a relationship with her recently revealed half-sister, Selina Kyle (The Batman's Zoë Kravitz). In the concluding moments of the finale, Sofia receives a letter from Selina, providing her with a glimmer of hope after Oz finagled her readmittance to Arkham. 'I would love to continue to play Sofia in any way,' says Milioti. 'I would also love to see Sofia and Selina team up and wreak complete and utter havoc on Gotham. I don't think we've ever seen that in the Batman universe.' A version of this story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
