CIM signs HBO as solo star at West Hollywood studio

CIM Group has leased all seven soundstages at its production studios in West Hollywood to HBO and its streaming service HBO Max.

The sibling cable channels signed a long-term lease for 161,000 square feet of soundstage space and production offices at CIM Group’s The Lot @ Formosa studio, according to a Wednesday announcement. CBRE brokered the deal for HBO. Lease terms were not disclosed.

The streaming service and production company will take all the soundstage space at the studio, along with some of its 100,000 square feet in creative offices.

CIM acquired the studio campus at 1041 North Formosa Avenue in 2007 for $15 million, records show. In 2015, the firm secured $99.75 million in construction financing from Pacific Western Bank. It has constructed three new creative office buildings onsite and conducted significant renovations.

This isn’t HBO’s first time using the space — it has filmed a number of productions at the studio, including “True Blood,” “Big Little Lies” and most recently “Euphoria.”

Recently, streaming services have started to gobble up office space in a race to keep churning out content. While studios were once commonly leased one TV show season at a time, streaming services and production companies such as Netflix are signing long-term leases for space.

Netflix currently occupies over 1.6 million square feet of space in Hollywood, while Hulu recently signed a seven-year lease for 351,000 square feet of office space at Boston Properties’ Colorado Center in Santa Monica.

In 2018, Amazon leased more than 70 percent of Hackman Capital’s Culver Studios, taking around 505,000 square feet of space, for its production wing Amazon Studios.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for HBO and HBO Max to have a full-fledged, Hollywood studio home, and we look forward to many new productions to come,” HBO and HBO Max’s head of production, Janet Graham Borba, said in a statement.