Dismay greets the demise of Windmill Lane Pictures, the post-production studio with a famous name that has ceased trading. Backers of the business include financier Dermot Desmond, whose IIU vehicle is a shareholder in parent company Mulino A Vento.
Workers called to a meeting on Wednesday were taken aback by the abrupt shutdown. Closure leads to the loss of 31 jobs from a staff already depleted by cuts last year. The company employed 53 with a €3.45 million wage bill in 2022, the last year for which abridged accounts are publicly available.
“Despite our best efforts to sustain operations, the business has become insolvent and is no longer viable in its current form,” the directors said. The board comprises non-executive chairman Brendan Binchy, interim chief executive Catherine Synnott, entrepreneur Martin Hawkes and IIU director John Bateson.
The Windmill Lane brand is one of the most storied in Irish commerce, not least because of its origins in the separate recording studios that were U2′s launch pad to global stardom 40 years ago.
But this business has struggled. After incurring an €809,596 loss in 2019, Windmill Lane Pictures managed to deliver a €365,878 profit in 2020. That final year of profit was half a decade ago. Accounts show a €174,833 loss in 2021, followed by a €107,833 loss in 2022. There was another loss in 2023 and the company was heavily loss-making in 2024, it is understood.
Revenues halved last year in the wake of actors’ and writers’ strikes in the US, disrupting production pipelines and compounding problems that built up in the business. This burned through equity, prompting a fruitless drive to secure more capital and restructure.
Burdened by high fixed costs after a pivot to visual special effects (VFX), the company was unable to show a pathway to profit. As technology evolves rapidly, VFX equipment is admittedly expensive. But so too were other costs. Based at Herbert Street in Dublin 2, the company’s annual rent bill was in the region of €500,000. In a volatile industry, that was one more pressure point on the road to closure.
- Sign up for Business push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Our Inside Business podcast is published weekly – Find the latest episode here
