A brief history about the world-renowned Water SFX Facility

Malta Film Studios: From MFF to Malta Film Studios

Updated September 2026

In 1963, SFX wizard Benjamin "Jim" Hole was filming on the Spanish coast when he encountered stormy seas that turned his shoot into a nightmare.

It was during a visit to Malta the following year that Jim decided to build a shallow "horizon" tank for his next water-based film, The Bedford Incident. The tank was built with the aid of government subsidies offered by the British government, which then ruled the island. It was later kept in operation for other productions, and the Malta Film Facilities — or MFF — was born.

MFF hosted several large films and mini-series, including Orca: The Killer Whale and Christopher Columbus. In 1980, a second, concave-shaped tank was built by British producer Lord Grade for the film Raise the Titanic.

MFF became renowned not only for its unique horizon tanks but also for its skilled construction workforce. Eventually, MFF's name was changed to Mediterranean Film Studios, or MFS.

During its first 30 years, the company was managed by various government political appointees. The most long-standing of these managers was the late Paul Avellino, who quickly earned himself an international reputation.

In the mid-1990s, the Maltese government, adhering to its new policy of privatising state enterprises, handed MFS over to Canadian businessman Charles J. Falzon of Catalyst Entertainment, based in Toronto. Under Falzon's chairmanship, the studio hosted several large films, including White Squall, Cutthroat Island, and U-571. The privatisation of MFS proved to be an integral step for the company, particularly in changing the mentality of what was possible and not.

However, the company's overheads were rising fast and becoming unsustainable against what was still, essentially, a very volatile and cyclical industry. The company had inherited some 40 employees from its period of state ownership, and the tanks were used as the bank's security for funding the creation of a movie theme park.

In 1998, the company radically downsized its management team in an effort to run operations in a more transparent and cost-efficient. Local production manager Malcolm Scerri-Ferrante — the eventual founder of PCP — was appointed by Catalyst Entertainment to head its production and marketing departments.

Over the two years that followed, he introduced a series of new policies and business practices. He fostered the inclusion of Maltese crew from the local TV industry and tapped into other resources, such as graduates of the local university's media studies programme, in order to build a local film crew base that could work hand in hand with foreign crews. This was the first time in three decades that Maltese crew members had held key positions on film shoots. He also opened the studio's doors to the press, which helped raise public awareness of the industry's untapped potential and the urgent need for financial incentives. Gradually, MFS managed to build political support for growth in the film industry.

The year 1999 became the busiest in MFS's then 35-year history — so busy that, on one day, two productions were filming in the same shallow tank (a CBS/RAI TV series called Jesus produced by Lorenzo Minoli and Paolo Lucidi, and a TV commercial for Belgium's Olympic swimmer producer by Bert Hamelick.)

That same year, the industry saw the setting up of the Malta Film Commission, following proposals made by PCP founder Malcolm Scerri-Ferrante to two prime ministers in 1996 and 1997. The process was helped along by further lobbying from producer Branko Lustig ahead of filming Gladiator in Malta.

Despite these busy times, MFS's financial debts proved too large to disappear overnight. The theme park, which had been running at an operating loss — largely due to a monopoly of tour companies demanding hefty commissions — was finally shut down in 2000.

Around this time, German entrepreneur Jost Merten, previously a minority shareholder in the theme park, became MFS's new owner as the other shareholders relinquished their shares. Merten managed to keep the facility afloat for 14 more years, amid occasional debate over whether he should have invested more in the studio's infrastructure. The truth is Merten put MFS on a financially viable path. Even so, the local debate continued, not helped by Merten's exploration of an idea to turn one of the least-used tanks into a fish farm to minimise financial losses — an idea he dropped soon after his studies concluded.

Adding to the controversy, for many years Merten had an unresolved dispute with the government looming over him regarding ground rent. Rent had gone unpaid since the facility's privatisation in the mid-1990s, before Merten took over. Various ministers and administrations are said to have tolerated this accumulating debt in recognition of the fact that Merten was key to the facility's survival, and that its bankruptcy would have caused serious damage to the island's film servicing industry. In court, Merten's lawyers explained how he had offered a settlement plan years before he was hit with a surprise legal action, despite ministers giving him assurances that a settlement is possible. But in 2014, after some nine years of litigation, a judge ordered him to vacate the land — by which point the government itself had changed.

Upon taking over the premises, the new government immediately set up a board of successful businessmen, tasked with preparing a report on the commercial prospects of the tanks and land. The goal: to turn the site into a first-class facility with at least one sound stage.

The facility — now renamed Malta Film Studios — is currently being managed by the government as an interim measure. A public tender was issued in autumn 2015, in accordance with EU regulations but there were no successfull applicants.

As of September 2026, the studio is still being run by the government, after the public tender process failed to attract investors. The government has reportedly committed some €35 million to upgrading the facility, which was expected to include its first sound stages. However the government is now seeking private investors to take over this enterprise, with the promise of a lucrative 65-year lease.