Britain bagging billions in film, TV production work
Film production in the United Kingdom soared 35 per cent to almost $2.3 billion during 2014 as tax breaks lured stars from Tom Cruise to Scarlett Johansson to the country.
London alone accounted for $1.8 billion of production spending, eclipsing France’s $1.1 billion, or also-ran Italy.
“We’ve suddenly become this really massive centre for global content production,” said Adrian Wootton, chief executive of Film London, a non-profit that promotes the industry in Europe’s biggest city.
Government officials across Europe are competing for investment from the creative industries by offering tax breaks to filmmakers and video game developers. Seventeen movies with budgets of at least $54 million accounted for 89 per cent of British film production spending during the year, according to Film London. Fifty crews are shooting on the streets of the city each day.
The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game, which both won Oscars, and Paddington featured local sights from Buckingham Palace to the Law Society. Mission Impossible 5 and the latest James Bond feature, Spectre, are in the works.
About three-quarters of Britain’s film industry is based in and around London. That portion is growing as the studios in the suburbs expand.
The Warner Bros. studio in Leavesden, where the Harry Potter series was shot, along with Inception and The Dark Knight, built three new sound stages and 100,000 square feet of office space.
At Pinewood Studios, where Spectre is being filmed, a $365-million expansion is underway. Conservative Secretary of State Eric Pickles overruled opposition from the local council to approve the project.
The introduction of tax relief by Gordon Brown set the stage for today’s boom.
Companies that produce films costing more than $36 million can claim a cash rebate of up to 20 per cent.
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne plans to increase that to 25 per cent and extend relief to high-end television.
The fastest growth is coming from special-effects studios like Double Negative, winner of an Oscar for its work on Interstellar, according to Wootton.