As we know from the movies, film producers are always on a call when you arrive for a meeting with them. Sure enough, Morgan O'Sullivan is on the phone talking about casting his latest project, Camelot, a television costume drama based on Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur, the late medieval rendering of the King Arthur legend, which starts shooting in Wicklow this June.

"Yes, you're right," he says into the receiver. "We have to start looking at Arthur and Guinevere as soon as possible. Yes, she's definitely on the list."

But because this is Ardmore Studios in Bray and not Megafilm Inc in Hollywood, O'Sullivan ends the call promptly and discreetly. In fact, apart from the somewhat incongruous treadmill, rowing machine and stationary bike parked beside the bay window in his office, nothing suggests that this is the foremost Irish outpost of Tinseltown. The exercise equipment does indicate the sort of hours O'Sullivan must keep in the intensive world of film and television production, though.

O'Sullivan's glittering record includes Braveheart and The Tudors – proof that, done right, centuries-old stories can be recreated for the screen. Yet he had to fight to get the green light for Camelot.

"It took me four months to even sell it," he says. "We're going into another period drama. Was the last one a fluke? I remember no studio would take Braveheart. It was primarily financed by Mel Gibson. Eventually 20th Century Fox came in, but they felt it was such a risk they parcelled it out to other studios."

O'Sullivan spent those four months selling Camelot in a hotel in Los Angeles, working his extensive contacts from nearly four decades in the film and TV business. The breakthrough came during a meeting with Chris Albrecht, the former head of HBO who bought The Sopranos, Band of Brothers, Sex and the City and Rome for the cable network. Now he's with upstart channel Starz and looking for original programming.

"The cable channels are really a great market for us," O'Sullivan says. "[Albrecht] started on a Tuesday and I saw him on a Friday. The first thing he said to me was, 'I'm not ordering any shows'. So I told him I wanted to do Camelot and he said, 'I love The Tudors, it's terrific. I love the Morte d'Arthur books', and he became more enthusiastic than I was."

O'Sullivan has already budgeted $47m (€34.7m) for just the first season of Camelot, putting the cost per episode at nearly $5m. That sounds expensive, but it's only half the price of the swords-and-sandals series Rome, which created the authentic look and feel of the ancient empire. Audiences – crucially American audiences – have now been conditioned to expect a lot.

"There is a fear about costume dramas in America," O'Sullivan says. "We're competing at a very high level. We've got to make it like a feature film. It's got to have that look, quality and texture. The depth and scale of the thing has to have real class."

That brings high stakes, which is why it took even an industry veteran with an enviable track record like O'Sullivan to get a green light on the project in the first place.

"A lot of these projects are pre-sold to the likes of Starz, HBO or Showtime, so they become the primary financier," O'Sullivan says. "Camelot is partnering with Graham King, who is a big film financier and producer in the UK who wants to be in television. Camelot is perfect for him to finance the foreign end. They literally put up the money in conjunction with Starz and then we come in with our tax money."

That Section 481 tax-incentive money is vital to getting these projects over the line, whether in television or film, O'Sullivan says. For most projects, the investors availing of Irish tax breaks account for as much as 28% of a production's funding. This comes from "ordinary punters", O'Sullivan says, as much as high-net investors looking for tax shelters.

And while the Irish banks are barely lending to most industries, they apparently have not lost their appetite for backing these investors to contribute to film projects. O'Sullivan gets fees out of this and takes a back-end, ownership position on each project.

"Once a show is sold it's relatively easy to get somebody to put in finance as an advance against foreign money," he says. "We do deficit finance with the tax-incentive money. You wouldn't have the industry here without that. We want to be in business with serious players who are well-financed and well-resourced. We've never had a bad experience and we've done 70 projects. It's about covering off risk, which means actually making money."

The return to the local economy is considerable, as well. The first season of shooting Camelot is estimated to be worth €20m to Bray and the surrounding areas. Between 300 and 400 people will cycle through the cast and crew once production starts. They have to eat and sleep – at the very least – for months while filming continues. This means catering, hotels and other service providers get the benefit.

And while Camelot may be the biggest production at Ardmore this year, it won't be the only one. In fact, O'Sullivan's dream is to build a self-sustainable film industry here in Ireland.

"My ambition is to have the semblance of an industry here," he says. "People in Hollywood have always told me, 'If you build it, we'll come'."

A new film studio in Ashford, 20km down the road from Ardmore, could be the next piece of that puzzle. Owner Joe O'Connell has built 75,000 sq ft of studio space, greatly expanding the capacity of Wicklow to stage simultaneous major productions.

"While we're doing Camelot, nothing else can really happen here," says O'Sullivan. "We take over the place."

Curriculum Vitae

Morgan O'Sullivan
Position: director, World 2000 Entertainment, film and TV producer
Age: 65
Family: wife Elizabeth and three daughters, Tara, Auveen, Ciara and four grandsons
Education: St Fintan's School, Sutton and Presentation College, Bray
Career: RTE, ABC Sydney, Walt Disney Company, Paramount, Fox, HBO, Showtime, NBC and CBS in Film and Television
Hobbies: Work, reading and golf