The Manhattan Beach soundstages that helped build The Mandalorian, Avatar and The Avengers could soon be pitched for a very different kind of production: drones, spacecraft and defense hardware. The 22-acre campus is being marketed to investors as aerospace and defense demand surges across the South Bay.
Lenders are shopping the Manhattan Beach Studios mortgage, valued at roughly $240 million, after owner Hackman Capital Partners defaulted on the loan. According to a report by Los Angeles Business Journal, the proposed play is to reposition the film property for advanced manufacturing tenants rather than keep relying solely on soundstage demand.
Why The Soundstages Fit
The physical case is unusually strong for a studio campus. MBS Media Campus describes the property as roughly 685,000 square feet of studio space across 22 acres, with 15 soundstages, offices and production support areas.
Those giant, controlled spaces can translate more easily to manufacturing than a typical office or retail property, particularly when tenants need power, parking and tall ceilings. The brokers pitching the site told the Los Angeles Business Journal that MBS has the clear height, heavy power and office capacity sought by aerospace startups, while its zoning is more flexible than some competing studio properties.
South Bay Aerospace Demand Is Doing The Heavy Lifting
The market backdrop gives the pitch some real momentum. Colliers reported that the South Bay contains about 201.2 million square feet of industrial space, while aerospace and defense companies accounted for 1.8 million square feet of leasing activity in the first quarter of 2026 as overall vacancy fell to 5%.
A major nearby lease shows why investors are hunting for facilities that can handle more than standard warehousing. The Los Angeles Times reported that Varda Space Industries leased about 205,443 square feet at El Segundo's former Mattel design facility, expanding its footprint in the region's growing space and advanced-manufacturing corridor.
The shift is also visible farther south: an earlier Hoodline report detailed True Anomaly's 90,000-square-foot Long Beach factory and the area's emerging “Space Beach” identity. In that context, Manhattan Beach Studios looks less like an isolated rescue plan and more like another piece of a South Bay industrial market being pulled toward aerospace and defense.
For now, the campus remains a film and television facility, and the defense-tech concept is a marketing strategy rather than an announced conversion or signed tenant deal. If investors pursue it, the property could become a high-profile test of whether Los Angeles' troubled studio real estate can be retrofitted for the region's next manufacturing boom.
