World News
Inside Tyler Perry Studios’ grand opening gala with Oprah, Spike Lee, Tiffany Haddish, Beyoncé and more
Tyler Perry’s $250 million studios opened over the weekend and it had the biggest names in entertainment industry in attendance.
The grand opening gala had 800 guests including A-list stars like Viola Davis, Ava DuVernay, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Halle Berry, Samuel L. Jackson, Tiffany Haddish and Stacey Abrams. They all walked the red carpet lined with walls adorned in roses and also shared their admiration and support for Perry.
The 134-hectare (330-acre) studio which once served as a Confederate army base is one of the largest in the US. Tyler Perry Studios has 12 soundstages, each named after seminal black actors and actresses, including Cicely Tyson, Whoopi Goldberg, Diahann Carroll, Will Smith, and Denzel Washington.
The complex is larger than Paramount, Warner Bros and Walt Disney’s Burbank studios combined. Perry is the first African American to own a studio outright — no corporation or partners are involved in the venture. He even mapped out the plans for the complex on his own: “If I hadn’t gone into entertainment, I would have been an architect.”
There’s a replica of the White House for his upcoming presidential television series “The Oval”, a hospital, jail, an airliner, an airport terminal, trailer park and a suburban subdivision.
Watch a video of the studio below.
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Here are more photos below:
