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BFI Boss on U.K.’s ‘Transformative’ New Indie Film Tax Credit: ‘My Phone Is Full of Euphoric Producers’
The new credit for independent British film has been described as 'the most significant policy intervention since the 1990s.'
The incentive — a 53% expenditure credit that equates to a tax relief of approximately 40% for U.K. productions with a budget of up to £15 million ($19.2 million) — was labeled by BFI chief executive Ben Roberts as “the most significant policy intervention since the 1990s.” Elsewhere, the likes of Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas, Barbara Broccoli, Andrew Haigh, Gurinder Chadha, Mike Leigh, Steve McQueen, Ridley Scott, Riz Ahmed, Jonathan Glazer, Gareth Edwards Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner were among the chorus of filmmaking heavyweights celebrating the news. Speaking to Variety a day later, Roberts underlines the impact the credit could have on the independent sector, which — while inward investment has boomed over the last decade — has found itself at a point of crisis, with many projects either being forced to relocate oversees or falling apart altogether. The report, which Roberts says the BFI “probably knew was going to tell a really bad story” before it was commissioned, painted a grim picture of the sector, which it claimed was strained to the point of market failure due to flatlining production budgets, rising costs and declining revenues.
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