News
October 10, 2014
Weekly Update from Film Ontario, October 10, 2014
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Happy Friday - and to all a lovely Thanksgiving weekend. Don't miss our 2014 Annual General Meeting, set for Wednesday, November 5th at the Park Hyatt Toronto. Members only Business meeting is from 5:30 - 6:30pm, with Guest Speaker and cocktails to follow, until 8pm. This year, our Guest Speaker is Please share with your staff/members; we are looking forward to seeing you all there! RSVP: sarah@filmontario.ca Sarah Ker-Hornell _____________________________________________________ Weekly Update from Kelly Graham-Scherer, Los Angeles Representative The allocation of California tax credits to two new projects was announced with great fanfare by Variety this week. A pair of New Line comedies are among the dozen projects to be added to the program for the 2014-15 fiscal year after moving off the waiting list. As detailed below, allocations are being shifted in anticipation of the program more than tripling in size in 2015-2016. The astounding generosity of film tax incentives in the U.K. continues to make headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. Last week I reported that Disney had received nearly £170 million ($306 million Cdn) in incentives since the program was introduced in 2007 and this week The Independent says Disney received $31 million alone to shoot The Avengers 2 there. As detailed below, despite the fact that the U.K. has long had a robust domestic industry, data from the British Film Institute shows that last year 81 per cent of total UK production spending was on films financed outside the country Another week brings another story about how upstart digital distributors like Netflix and Amazon are challenging traditional television networks. Case in point is the story from Variety below which reports that Amazon is looking to launch a signature sitcom and is willing to spend up to $4 million on pilots to make it happen. Studio System Insider this week also had an interesting story about how Netflix and Amazon are changing the television landscape. According to the article below: "These streaming services are genuine game-changers in the way they challenge the status quo and now that their content is starting to reach quality parity with the best programmers, it’s literally altering audience viewing habits in a real way". Finally this week, industry watchers have had their eyes on China for some time now, noting the exponential growth of its film industry and looking for opportunities to take advantage of that growth. However a recent report in the L.A. Times illustrates that there still exists a huge cultural gap between Hollywood and China: as detailed below, China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television this week prohibited the presentation of works made by any actors and/or directors who have been arrested recently on drug-use or prostitution charges. |