PARAMOUNT TO RECEIVE $700-MILLION FACELIFT

Paramount, Hollywood’s oldest studio, is about to get a makeover. The studio, whose first home was an old barn where Samuel Goldwyn, Jesse L. Lasky, and Cecil B. DeMille produced The Squaw Man in 1914, will take over some adjacent properties and develop a new facility, which, when completed, will add 1.4 million square feet of production space at an estimated cost of $700 million. A huge outdoor fake sky and the area around it are expected to be removed and the space used for office and studio construction. In the digital age, when computers can easily insert any sort of sky known to nature into a scene, such relics are no longer necessary. Before construction can begin, a host of building permits and environmental impact reports will be required and any objections from neighbors must be dealt with, but Eric Garcetti, the city councilman who oversees the Hollywood area, apparently expects no serious hurdles. He told the Los Angeles Times that he is “very excited to see the confidence Paramount has in Los Angeles and Hollywood. I believe we are in Hollywood’s second golden age right now.”