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Anita Verma-Lallian, founder of Camelback Productions, doesn’t see the future of film production in Los Angeles. Instead, in her vision, it is on a complex one hour’s drive west of Phoenix, complete with backlots, a Universal
Studios-inspired theme park — and a data center.
Such is the AI-powered future Verma-Lallian hopes to achieve with a sprawling 1,400-acre complex off the I-10 interstate in Arizona, the state she calls home and where she believes more productions should be based. The compound will also include a suite of hotels and resorts, a collection of stores, residential space, and an AI and tech center — all powered by the data center in what the company says is the largest film and entertainment complex in the U.S.
The project has estimated price tag of between $6 billion and $12 billion, with funding derived in phases from a mix of private equity investors, construction loans and investment from Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors approved the zoning of 1,000 acres of the project Wednesday, and Verma-Lallian hopes to break ground on the project within the next year and roll it out in phases over the next decade.
The “passion project,” as Verma-Lallian puts it, is ambitious, fusing her real estate experience as the founder of Arizona Land Consulting, which oversees a roughly $1 billion portfolio, with her passion for film as CEO of Camelback, an independent production company. She hopes for the project to be sustainable, powered completely through renewable energy resources such as solar grids and employing an advanced water conservation system.
“There’s a real missed opportunity for the industry to not have production happen here,” she said in a recent interview. “Arizona is a great place for film production just because it’s so close to L.A. You’re about four and a half hours or so from Burbank, but it’s a lot easier in certain ways. Arizona is a [right-to-work] state. You don’t have some of the unions you have in California. The costs are cheaper. Cost of land is usually a lot cheaper. Taxes, operating expenses, things like that, can be significantly lower in Arizona.”
But its existence alone is likely to stir controversy. For starters, many Americans across the political spectrum profess their distaste for data centers. Moreover, Hollywood unions and civic leaders have been desperate to retain productions in Los Angeles after a yearslong departure to other cities and countries and as the industry writ large grapples with AI’s impact on the production process. The Arizona project shows that Verma-Lallian, who has spent years breaking into the market, is not afraid to ruffle feathers in the ultimate hope of boosting the production pipeline.
Verma-Lallian — known in part for her purchase of the Pacific Palisades home of actor Matthew Perry roughly a year after he died at the estate — doesn’t see the broad backlash against data centers as problematic per se. Having worked on data center projects through her real estate portfolio, Verma-Lallian says it’s all a matter of where they are sited. “You have to be very mindful to not put them in neighborhoods or residential areas where you’re putting them in people’s backyards, and so we’re just strategic about picking locations that are either more industrial or a little bit more remote, where there’s not a lot of residential development, and picking them in areas with that will actually benefit them,” she said.
Camelback says the AI and tech center, one of the project’s core facets, will combine “virtual production, AI-powered editing, and data-driven storytelling,” terms that could alarm industry veterans beholden to the creative process. Verma-Lallian said there’s “no world in which that goes away or gets replaced” by AI, but she believes the technology can help reinvigorate the industry through cost-cutting tools that could bolster the number of films made and, on a case-by-case basis, add generative material to certain scenes or in some films.
“There’s different tools where you can basically put a script into a tool and get a rough draft of what a movie should look like, which I think saves a lot of time and money,” she said, though claims the company has not used such tools yet. “if you’re someone that’s investing in films, it also gives you a lot more confidence as to what a final project or movie could look like. So I just see more movies getting made, more movies getting funded, and things coming out a lot faster.”
The project represents the next big leap for Camelback, which she founded in 2023 and counts Oscar nominee Kumail Nanjiani as a board member, as it prepares for a fall slate that includes the Cynthia Erivo-led “Prima Facie” and the Owen Wilson-starrer “Runner.” But as she looks toward its future, she sees the complex as a “very blank canvas” and one where she hopes to “leave a legacy and actually make some sort of a difference.”
“It’s sort of the whole Disney approach, when Walt Disney was looking at Anaheim,” she said. “It’s kind of the same vision that I have.”
