Tammy Williams will become a majority owner of a $135 million dollar production studio in Atlanta. According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Cinema South Studios located north of Fayette County will have a wardrobe rental facility, a lighting grip rental house, 11 soundstages, a back-lot, a prop house, a transportation company and an office building with a theater and post-production facilities.
Williams has partnered with Gary Guidry, an investor and CEO of G-Square Events and Black Promoters Collective to make this possible. When the studio is completed, she will be the first majority Black female owner of a studio in the state, she said.
She told Atlanta-Journal Constitution that the dream of owning a studio has been 12 years in the making. “We’ve been patient,” she said. “This has not been an overnight thing, this vision for us.”
According to Leading Ladies Africa, Williams has over 25 years of experience in the film and television industry and has been behind many projects such as films, biographies, documentaries, and network news.
In 2016, she established Tammy’Dele Films, a film, television and digital production company. Her Cinema South Studios, which will occupy 60 acres, will be home to Tammy’Dele Films, Tammy’Dele Films Workshops, and Cinema South Film Academy, she told AJC.
According to her biography on IMDb, Williams majored in Mass Communications/Radio & Television Production. Her career in television began directly after college as an editor in news at WTVF CBS in Nashville, TN. She started writing and producing short form promos and commercials at WRCB TV -NBC in Chattanooga, TN, and then expanded to long-formatted documentaries and live shows at WDSU NBC, New Orleans, LA.
Cinema South Studios is expected to break ground in March.
In October 2019, Tyler Perry threw a star-studded party to commemorate the opening of his $250 million film studio in Atlanta. One of the biggest film studios in American history, Tyler Perry Studios is built on land that used to be a confederate army base where Whites fought to keep Blacks enslaved.