ABQ Castle StudiosAlbuquerque film studio rental
Film & movie studios in Albuquerque, New Mexico
ABQ Castle Studios is a New Mexico film studio in Albuquerque, built for feature films. Your locations are photoreal virtual sets, live in camera, and your qualified New Mexico spend earns the 30% refundable tax credit.
8610 President Pl NE, Albuquerque, NM 87113
- 30% refundable NM film tax credit
- 250+ sets, ready to load
- Three ARRI Alexa 35 cameras
- Parking, green rooms, easy load-in
Or call 818-861-7317 Albuquerque 818-934-3775 Burbank
Productions that have trusted us
Networks, streamers and the majors shoot at our studios.
Hart to Heart, Aquaman 2, Inventing Anna, Bosch, The Mummy, Greenland, Deadliest Catch and national spots for T-Mobile, Amazon and Domino's. Full credit list
The Albuquerque studio
What you get at our New Mexico film studio
Among the film and movie studios in Albuquerque, ours is the only one running patented real-time virtual production. The location is a photoreal virtual set that appears around your cast live, in camera, on our stage. You see the finished shot on the monitor while you film, and the location can change between takes, so a picture moves from a courtroom or a precinct to a Western saloon to a Manhattan street without a company move.
ABQ Castle Studios opened in 2024 and is one of the largest virtual production stages in the world (KOAT covered it on Oscars night). It runs the same CastleVision pipeline and the same 250+ virtual sets as our Burbank studio. We pioneered the method in 2007 and now hold two U.S. patents on it. As a New Mexico Qualified Production Facility, studio days here put a production on the 30% film tax credit track.
What the Albuquerque rental includes
- The studio floor and its green screen cyclorama
- 250+ ready-to-load virtual sets from the library
- Lighting and grip on the floor, plus the audio package
- The teleprompter system
- Dressing rooms, makeup, green rooms and production offices
- The operator who runs the virtual sets, so the Unreal Engine pipeline is staffed when you arrive
Optional: a crew package with three camera operators and a teleprompter operator, or bring your own team. New Mexico crew and local department heads are on call. Need a set the library doesn't have? We build custom virtual sets to your spec.
Albuquerque studio quick facts
- Address
- 8610 President Pl NE, Albuquerque, NM 87113. Open in Google Maps
- Getting here
- About 10 minutes from the ABQ Sunport, in the Journal Center corridor
- Opened
- 2024
- Tax credit
- A New Mexico Qualified Production Facility on the Film Office's list: 30% refundable credit on qualified in-state spend
- Cameras
- Three ARRI Alexa 35s, a telescoping crane and three camera-tracking systems
- Light & key
- 36 Aputure Nova P300c fixtures and three Ultimatte keyers for the live composite
- Load-in
- Easy load-in and extensive parking
- Support
- Many dressing and green rooms, a star-talent motorhome, and a furniture and prop warehouse to dress the foreground of any set
- Audience
- Audience seating when the production needs it
- Hours
- Studio tours and demos by appointment. Production days run on your call sheet.
- Contact
- 818-861-7317
Studio Tour
Tour our Albuquerque film studio.
A full walkthrough of ABQ Castle Studios: the floor, the gear and the sets. In-person producer tours run by appointment.
From the set library
Sets a feature needs, ready to load in Albuquerque
A courtroom, a precinct, a cell block, a Western saloon and a Manhattan street, from the same library as Burbank. Sets load in seconds and swap the same day.
Check availability
Check dates at the Albuquerque studio
Tell us the picture, the shoot days and your dates. A producer reads it, not a sales queue, and replies with availability and a quote.
- Turnkey: the studio, 250+ sets, lighting, audio and the operator who runs the virtual sets
- A New Mexico Qualified Production Facility: studio days here put you on the 30% refundable credit track
- Quoted against your actual shoot, never a rack rate
Rather talk it through? 818-861-7317 · Albuquerque
818-934-3775 · Burbank
Got it. Thank you.
Your inquiry is in.
A producer will reach out to talk through your project and next steps. Need us sooner? Call 818-934-3775 (Burbank) or 818-861-7317 (Albuquerque).
Sound stage or virtual set
Albuquerque sound stage rental, or a virtual production studio?
An empty floor
An Albuquerque sound stage rental usually means an empty floor. You rent the space, then build, dress and strike every interior, and each exterior becomes a company move somewhere across the state.
ABQ Castle Studios
ABQ Castle Studios works the other way round: it is a turnkey virtual production studio, and each location is a photoreal virtual set that appears around your cast live, in camera, on our stage. The precinct, the saloon and the desert canyon all shoot on the same floor.
What stays physical is everything the actors touch. Dress the foreground from the furniture and prop warehouse, light it with the fixtures already on the grid, and approve the finished composite on the monitor before you move on. If the picture needs a room the library doesn't have, we build it as a custom virtual set. Every set stays on drives between shoots, so pickups reload the exact set, lighting and framing months later: virtual standing sets in Albuquerque with no storage fee.
Weighing New Mexico against Los Angeles? Our film studio rental page puts the Albuquerque and Burbank studios side by side, and the green screen versus LED volume comparison explains the two ways to shoot virtual production.
Inside the Albuquerque studio
Take a look around the New Mexico studio
The real building in Albuquerque: the floor, the crane, the dressing rooms and the parking outside. The full facility gallery has more of both studios.
Click any photo to enlarge.
Why New Mexico
Why Albuquerque: a Qualified Production Facility on New Mexico's 30% credit
ABQ Castle Studios is a New Mexico Qualified Production Facility, on the New Mexico Film Office's list of qualified production facilities. That is the 25% base film credit plus the 5% facility uplift: a 30% refundable rebate on qualified expenses paid in-state, such as cast, crew, post-production and catering. Shooting your locations as virtual sets keeps more of the budget on that qualified in-state spend.
The state pays the credit out after your spend is reviewed; how the New Mexico film tax credit pays out. Confirm the numbers with your production accountant and the New Mexico Film Office.
- Researching the Film Office incentive?
- Our New Mexico film tax credit guide walks through the math, what qualifies and how the payout works.
- New Mexico crew on call
- Local department heads and NM-based crew, with in-state spend qualifying against the rebate. Shooting inside the studio needs no City of Albuquerque film permit.
- Split the shoot with Burbank
- The same pipeline and the same sets run at our Burbank studio, so a production can split between the two without losing continuity.
- Financing for qualifying productions
- For a select number of productions we choose to back, investor-backed financing is available before shoot day. Offered at our discretion and subject to qualification. How production financing works
Filming in New Mexico: the Albuquerque Film Office for city resources, and our round-up of what has been filmed in Albuquerque.
Features lead the schedule here, but the same floor takes series too, and multi-camera TV studio rental for talk show sets in Albuquerque, game show sets or news set rental. Brands book it for commercials and corporate video production in Albuquerque, and it just as easily takes host wraps, press junkets, music video shoots, sci-fi and spaceship scenes, vertical drama production and podcasts.
On the floor
Cameras, crane, tracking and lighting at the Albuquerque studio
This is the package on the Albuquerque floor. The operator who runs the virtual sets is included in every rental, so the Unreal Engine pipeline is running the moment you arrive; your quote spells out the rest.
Cinema cameras and lenses
Three ARRI Alexa 35 cinema cameras with Fujinon cinema zooms: a 14–35mm wide and a 20–120mm telephoto, calibrated to the camera-tracking system.
Camera movement and tracking
A carbon-fiber telescoping crane with dolly and ARC compensation, carbon-fiber pedestals, three camera- and motion-tracking systems, and Tilta Nucleus-M wireless focus.
Virtual production systems
Unreal Engine render and playback machines, virtual system software, and three Ultimatte keyers for live, in-camera compositing.
Green screen, lighting and grip
A green screen cyclorama, 36 Aputure Nova P300c LED fixtures across the grid and floor (softboxes, grids, barn doors), and a full grip package.
Audio, routing and recording
Sennheiser lavs and booms, an Allen & Heath SQ7 console, AJA Ki-Pro recording, Blackmagic switching and routing, Teranex processing, and three teleprompters.
Spaces and support
Production, dining, makeup and dressing rooms, a star-talent motorhome, a furniture and prop warehouse, a scissor lift, and parking.
Watch the work
Scenes finished in camera at our studios
Shot at L.A. & ABQ Castle Studios on the same pipeline the Albuquerque floor runs, including a CastleVision capture of Old Town Albuquerque. Hover to preview; click to play with sound. Tap to play with sound.
Questions
Questions about film studios in Albuquerque
- Are there film studios in Albuquerque, NM?
- Yes. Albuquerque is one of the busiest production hubs in the country, driven by New Mexico's refundable film tax credit and a deep bench of stages and crew, including Netflix's Albuquerque Studios. Among them, ABQ Castle Studios at 8610 President Pl NE is the virtual production option: a patented real-time Unreal Engine studio with the same CastleVision pipeline and 250+ standing sets as our Burbank studio, and a Qualified Production Facility designation that unlocks the state's 30% film tax credit.
- Where is ABQ Castle Studios located?
- At 8610 President Pl NE, Albuquerque, NM 87113, in the Journal Center corridor about 10 minutes from the Albuquerque (ABQ) Sunport. The studio has three ARRI Alexa 35 cinema cameras, a telescoping crane and a green screen cyclorama, and the operator who runs the virtual sets is included in every booking. A New Mexico-based camera and teleprompter crew package is available as an add-on.
- Does ABQ Castle Studios qualify for New Mexico's 30% film tax credit?
- Yes. ABQ Castle Studios is a Qualified Production Facility (QPF), the designation New Mexico requires to reach the 30% refundable credit on qualifying in-state spend. We'll model your production against the rebate while you're on the floor.
- Can a feature film shoot at ABQ Castle Studios?
- Yes. Features are the core of what the Albuquerque studio does. Mr. Spaceship, a feature-length sci-fi drama, was captured almost entirely in camera here with a New Mexico resident crew and an all-New Mexico cast, and The Running Woman shot at ABQ Castle Studios. Locations are virtual sets loaded on the floor, so a picture can move from a courtroom to a precinct to a city street without a company move.
- What is included when you rent the Albuquerque studio?
- The studio, the 250+ set library, lighting and grip, the audio package, the teleprompter system, dressing rooms, makeup, green rooms and production offices, and the operator who runs the virtual sets in real time. An optional crew package adds three camera operators and a teleprompter operator, or you bring your own team. Every production is quoted on its shoot days, crew, sets and format; there is no rack rate.
- Can we tour the Albuquerque studio before booking?
- Yes. Producer tours run by appointment and include a live CastleVision demo, so you watch the composite run on the monitor before you book. Ask through the form on this page or call the Albuquerque line.
- Is ABQ Castle Studios the same as Netflix's Albuquerque Studios?
- No. Netflix's Albuquerque Studios is a separate lot. ABQ Castle Studios is our own film studio at 8610 President Pl NE, in the Journal Center corridor, run by L.A. Castle Studios, the same company behind our Burbank studio. It is the Albuquerque studio that shoots with patented real-time virtual production.
- How much does it cost to rent a film studio in Albuquerque?
- There is no rack rate at ABQ Castle Studios; the quote is built on your shoot days, crew, sets and format and covers the turnkey studio: the floor, the set library, lighting, grip, audio and the operator who runs the virtual sets. Because the studio is a New Mexico Qualified Production Facility, studio days here put a production on the 30% refundable film tax credit track. Send the picture and your dates through the form on this page and a producer replies with availability and a quote.
- Is there parking and load-in for a feature company at the Albuquerque studio?
- Yes. The building has extensive parking and easy load-in, a star-talent motorhome and a furniture and prop warehouse on site. Send your truck count and basecamp needs with your dates, and walk the load-in on your studio tour.
Planning a New Mexico shoot? Start here.
The tax math, the sets, and the studio that pairs with Albuquerque.
- New Mexico film tax credit guide The 25% base plus 5% facility uplift, what qualifies, and how the payout works.
- The virtual set library 250+ ready-to-load sets, the same library in Albuquerque and Burbank.
- Courtroom, police station and jail sets The procedural rooms a crime feature or series needs, side by side.
- Sci-fi and spaceship sets Bridges, corridors and stations for genre features.
- Film and TV virtual production How features and series shoot finished shots in camera.
- Film studio rental: compare our two studios Compare the two studios side by side.
- The Burbank studio The same pipeline and sets in Los Angeles, if the shoot splits between states.
- CastleVision Our patented method for bringing a real place onto the studio floor.
- Virtual production technology Tracking, Unreal Engine and live keying: the pipeline both studios run.
- Virtual standing sets for series Reload the exact set, lighting and framing months later for pickups.
- Production financing For a select number of productions we choose to back.
- How rates work What drives the quote: shoot days, crew, sets and format.
- Facility photos Both buildings, room by room.
- Full credit list Features, series, talk shows and national spots made at our studios.
- Virtual production studio FAQs What a rental includes, crew, pricing and the New Mexico credit, answered.
Send the picture and your dates. We reply with availability at the Albuquerque studio and a quote, and we can model the production against the New Mexico rebate on your tour.
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