Treasure Island movie workshop reopening

On top of massive new development, as well as lingering questions about in what kind of condition the U.S. Navy left the place, now Treasure Island residents have a new variable in their lives: Hollywood.

On Wednesday, the San Francisco Film Commission announced that Hangar 3, a 79,000-square-foot space once used for a number of high-profile movie shoots, is back in business after a decade of forsaking the call of the big screen.

Although Hangar 3 is dubbed as production space, it’s not actually meant to appear on camera but rather serves as a workshop area for shoots.

“The dedicated space allows for production companies to stage, build sets, film in San Francisco, [and] provide a dedicated home for the film industry,” according to the mayor’s office.

In the past, a number of movies featuring Bay Area comedian Robin Williams used the building for a slew of projects, including Mrs. Doubtfire, Flubber, and, perhaps unfortunately, Patch Adams.

The last production to use the space was the HBO flick Hemingway & Gellhorn in 2010.

The film commission is the City Hall body that oversees and regulates movie shoots in San Francisco, but its job is also to help make the city an attractive location for lucrative movie projects.

Hollywood loves setting movies in and around San Francisco—the upcoming sequel to 2018’s Venom is in the works—but rarely likes paying to do much actual shooting here, usually substituting cheaper locations in states like Georgia or the industry’s old standby of Toronto, Canada.

While the commission issued dozens of permits for 2019-release films and TV shows, all of them were for just a handful of projects: Joe Talbot’s The Last Black Man In San Francisco, Netflix’s adaptation of Tales of the City, indie rom-com Always Be My Maybe, and OA Part II, the follow-up to the 2016 Netflix sci-fi series.