The Highland studio consortium backed by actor James Cosmo is unlikely now to proceed with the plan to develop a studio and visitor complex at the site of a former hospital and will need to look elsewhere in the area to site its complex.

According to Trish Shorthouse, Film Commissioner for the Highlands and Islands, the Cosmo Highland studio plan has gathered plenty of supporters, including Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, Sony Digital, two American backers and Scottish Screen, who have advocated a purpose-built film studio for Scotland ever since they were formed.

"There is disappointment that the development proposed may not now go ahead in the original form," says Film Commissioner Trish Shorthouse, "but the consortium of investors are still as determined as ever and are talking to the Forestry Commission among other people, looking at alternative sites for their proposal."

The former hospital studio development plan had full backing of the local authority and readily received planning permission for the studio and for a moving image theatre as a visitor attraction.

The proposal for the hospital was imaginative, according to the Commissioner.

"The façade of the hospital was to be retained as frontage for the studio development behind. Some of the current facilities were to be retained, for use as period hospital locations."

The financial viability of the plan though, depended on a housing development on a different part of the site and this has not proved possible. A studio and visitor complex alone, without the housing proposal, effectively blocked the site for the proposed development.

The consortium are now actively looking for a site elsewhere in the area around the Highland capital, having ruled out an earlier plan to consider a site near Fort William. Inverness is preferred, because of its airport.

It is believed a site close to Culloden is now under active investigation. Placing the development close to an historic battlefield like Culloden would give the linked leisure and visitor attraction opportunities to focus on an important historical events like the Jacobite uprisings.

Whilst looking around for alternatives, the developers have been keen to learn from experience elsewhere. Together with Scottish Screen they have just returned from a fact-finding tour of rural studio facilities in Sweden, where filmmaking is seen as an activity that can boost rural economies.

One of the strengths of the Highland studio proposal is that little, if any of the cost, would need to come from the public purse. "The consortium have already raised more than threequarters of the capital they need for the kind of development proposed, so any public purse investment that might be required would be minimal in terms of the overall cost," Commissioner Shorthouse maintains.