Why Brexit has been good for British film
The markets were uncertain, the future unclear. Yet somehow 2016 proved to be a bumper year for the British film industry, said Alex Ritman in The Hollywood Reporter. According to new figures published by the British Film Institute (BFI), last year the industry saw its second-highest UK box office takings ever. And it hasn’t just been a question of financing films: an impressive £1.6bn was spent on making films here in Britain. That’s a rise of 13% on 2015, and the highest such figure since the BFI began compiling their statistics back in 1994.
Oddly enough, the spike in spending may partly have been driven by Brexit. The fall in the value of the pound following the EU referendum in June has made it tantalisingly cheap for foreign studios to make films here. Some of the credit must also go to George Osborne, said Catherine Shoard in The Guardian. As chancellor, he set up a tax relief scheme in 2014 designed to lure Disney to cross the Atlantic to shoot their mega-budget Star Wars reboot, The Force Awakens. This set a trend for other major Hollywood studios to follow suit.
The BFI report also revealed that the UK’S independent cinemas are thriving, said Rob Walker in The Observer. Just a few years ago many small local cinemas were on the verge of folding, yet last year they accounted for 23% of screens nationwide – up from 17% the previous year. Some, such as the Duke of York’s Picturehouse in Brighton, have found a new revenue source in live-streaming plays and operas. Others have diversified in more eccentric and extravagant ways. For example, the Electric Cinema in Birmingham was last year the venue for a Star Warsthemed wedding: Lyndsey Holden and James Burrows exchanged vows there, flanked by six stormtroopers and a 6ft 7in Chewbacca. “Even the registrar did his reading in a Yoda voice,” the bride recalled. “It was fab.”