A 4-acre property in Mumbai, the site of the historic Filmistan Studio which churned out blockbuster movies in the 1940s and 1950s, has been acquired by Arkade Developers for ₹165 crore.

Arkade plans to develop luxury residences on the site with a saleable area of 5 lakh square feet and estimated revenue potential of ₹2000 crore. The property is currently leased to Filmistan Pvt Ltd, and Amit Jain, Chairman and Managing Director, Arkade Developers, told businessline that the lease would be terminated and the tenant appropriately compensated.

The property was acquired from Aspen Properties Pvt Ltd and their joint venture partners, Kamanwala Housing Construction.

Jain said that the aim is to build luxury and premium highrises on the property with spacious apartments with three and four bedrooms at starting rates of ₹40,000 per square feet.

The property is located in Goregaon in the western suburbs of the financial capital and according to Jain, there are no comparable projects in that area.

This is the second studio to be snapped up by a real estate developer, after RK Studios in Chembur was acquired by Godrej Properties in 2023.

Filmistan was set up in 1943 by Ashok Kumar and Sashadhar Mukherjee and one of the first movies to be produced by it was Chal Chal Re Naujawan in 1944 that had Ashok Kumar and Naseem Banu in the lead roles.

Some of the movies produced by the studio were ‘Do Bhai,’ ‘Jagriti,’ ‘Nastik’ and Dev Anand-starrer ‘Paying Guest.’

When Sashadhar left the studio in 1958, the quality of movies produced by it also suffered and in recent times it has been used as a studio for film shoots as well as some reality shows.

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