Tax
relief launched in the UK for high-end TV and animation, is being hailed as
“one of the biggest opportunities we’ve had in a generation”. Clive Bull
reports
The UK’s already robust
film and television production sector is experiencing another uplift thanks to
recently launched Creative Sector Tax Reliefs announced for high-end television
and animation, with a games incentive pending EC Sate Aid Approval. The schemes
include provision for tax relief on television productions where the budget
exceeds £1m per broadcast hour, amounting to a 25% rebate on qualifying
production spend within the UK, capped at 80% of the budget. To a large extend,
the new television incentive is based on the existing Film Tax Relief (FTR),
which is credited with bringing numerous major productions to the UK. As with
the FTR, there is a points-based cultural test to establish whether the
production qualifies as British.
“The Film Tax Relief, since it was launched in its
present form in 2007, has been a great success,” Adrian Wootton, chief
executive of the British Film Commission and Film London, says. “It’s attracted
an awful lot of inward investment, which has allowed the British film industry
to invest and expand.”
But while film companies were finding the UK an
attractive proposition both in terms of facilities available and the financial
incentives, there was a growing feeling the large-scale television productions,
particularly from the US, were not being offered the same competitive edge.
That case was conveyed by the industry to the UK government and the result was
the announcement of a tax relief in April 2012 which already appears to be
attracting ambitious drama projects that might previously have had to look
elsewhere.
Wootton says a lot of creative decision-making informs
television companies’ choice of location, unless that choice is ruled out on
the ground of finance. Companies like HBO, he adds, were insisting that they wanted
to come to the UK but needed the level playing field that a competitive
incentive affords in order to make that choice. “They said, ‘We’re spending
billions of dollars worldwide and where’s the one place we want to shoot and we
can’t? It’s in the UK. So give us the reason to do it. We know what you can
deliver and we’d rather make it with you if we could.’”
It’s clear that the financial incentive is not the only
motivation behind productions preferring to be based in the UK. “Think about
the concentration of facilities that we have, the quality of the crews, the
amount of investment we have made in training, the time zones – and also the
language factor is not an inconsiderable one,” Wootton says. “There’s a whole
multiplicity of factors and what we needed was the missing piece in the jigsaw
puzzle. We’ve got that missing piece now and I think we’ve got a really
competitive and exciting offer that people will want to grab.”
The worldwide shift towards high-end serial drama is
another significant factor behind the new incentive, as terrestrial
broadcasters, along with cable, satellite and online players, seeking to give
themselves an audience USP, move increasingly towards more lavish shows with
higher production values.
Richard Williams, chief executive of Northern Ireland
Screen, cites HBO’s Game Of Thrones as a case in point. “It is the perfect
example,” he says. “I think our being able to articulate what the value of Game
Of Thrones was to the development of the sector here, and its value to the economy,
was one of a number of very significant arguments that led to the tax
incentive.”
The HBO epic fantasy series is now confirmed as shooting
for a fourth season in Northern Ireland. Williams says help from the Northern
Ireland Assembly in funding the pilot was the clincher: “We provided the same
level of incentive for the pilot that we did for the first season, on the logic
that if you don’t get the pilot, you can’t get the series. So that was a bit of
a risk, but it paid off for us. And that is one of the important pieces of the
legislation – that the incentive needs to be available to pilots, because for a
lot of the broadcasters that’s still the way they do it. Game Of Thrones
wouldn’t have happened in Northern Ireland if the pilot hadn’t happened in Northern
Ireland.”
John McVay, chief executive of Pact, which represents UK
independent content, was on the Treasury working group that advised government
on the structure of the new tax relief. He agrees that high-end series will be
attracted to the UK by the scheme. “If you look at the strategies of a lot of
the US networks that produce high-cost drama, they are looking to try and find
ways to finance that,” he says. “They look around the globe for co-production
partners, co-financing and incentives, because the TV industry has gone global
very quickly. So the UK is well placed to be a hub for that type of production
internationally. But also it’s a great opportunity for us, because we have very
high-quality international producers based in the UK. Having an incentive in
your pocket when you go out into the market is very, very helpful.”
McVay says the Starz/BBC Worldwide production Da Vinci’s
Demons, shot in South Wales with the help of the Welsh government, is another
example of the kind of high-quality drama already shooting in the UK. “They
started that without incentives and I’m quite sure those shorts of channels and
producers will be looking at the UK with even more interest now that we have an
incentive,” he says. “People like to work in the UK because we offer very high
quality, have a very can-do attitude, and the people are generally welcoming to
production. We have very good technical skills, and very good post-production
and CGI – that’s been the rationale for so many US feature films to come here.”
Already prompting widespread interest from around the
world, Wootton says the initiative will bring inward investment from big
international dramas, co-productions with UK companies, and domestic drama that
was previously going offshore.
“I think it’s one of the biggest opportunities we’ve had
in a generation,” Wootton adds. “This is a brand new opportunity and,
certainly, if the volume of enquiries and level of interest that we’ve been
getting both in London and in the US office of the British Film Commission is
anything to go by, the UK will soon be first choice for international high-end
production.”
Article courtesy of Location
UK.
