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How is the British film industry getting on?
I remember as a kid in the 90s being aware of the British film industry struggling for funding. The Full Monty was massively hyped because it was a successful, home grown film.
Fast forward to present day, without being particularly knowledgable on the subject, British film appears to be booming. Are the Bond films still British owned, or are they classed as American films? Harry Potter, British owned mega franchise that now includes a major attraction at Universal Studios. Brits have always been good technically, but from what I gather, Brits are always picking up technical awards at the Oscars, British directors are heading up huge movies and British actors are all over American film and TV.
I know the film industry in this country benefits from tax breaks and probably lottery funding, but can someone more knowledgable fill me on in how the industry is in the UK?
Fast forward to present day, without being particularly knowledgable on the subject, British film appears to be booming. Are the Bond films still British owned, or are they classed as American films? Harry Potter, British owned mega franchise that now includes a major attraction at Universal Studios. Brits have always been good technically, but from what I gather, Brits are always picking up technical awards at the Oscars, British directors are heading up huge movies and British actors are all over American film and TV.
I know the film industry in this country benefits from tax breaks and probably lottery funding, but can someone more knowledgable fill me on in how the industry is in the UK?
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In all honesty though the origin of a films nation gets harder as the world gets more globalised and big multinational media conglomerates take control of the industry.
Bond is a great example. British source material.....but American money.....but Columbia is a subsidiary of Sony....So is it part Japanese.?
British in 2014. Of these, 240 were films which passed the cultural
test and 15 were official co-productions.
■ The total production budget of finally certified cultural test films
was £1,856 million (£1,353 million in 2013); the total budget of
finally certified co-productions was £68 million
(£113 million in 2013).
■ Twenty-five cultural test films had budgets of over £10 million,
up from 16 in 2013.
■ In 2014, the median budget for cultural test films was £0.3 million;
the median budget for co-productions was £4 million.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/bfi-film-other-screen-sector-productions-certified-as-british-2015-11-04.pdf
Yeah, that probably about right. It still really is a very small scale industry. Really, it's just a tack-on one compared to the UK's TV industry. Most of the talent and money gets funneled into that.
It's better than it was. I do remember when Barry Norman had his famous BBC film program, and his commenting on it. I suppose in the 1990s, it did take a certain upturn :
Howard's End, The Crying Game, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Full Monty, etc.
Trouble is, Channel 4 have downgraded their film output nowadays. It's not what it was. We don't have a major UK based distributor(I think Palace Pictures was probably the last one in the 1980s and they went bankrupt after The Crying Game). It's also difficult to get major distribution in the USA, unless you link-up with someone like Miramax - and then I think a lot the profits go to them.
A lot of the blockbusters(Star Wars, James Bond) - whilst filmed here and using the studios(Elstree, Pinewood, etc.) come from US money. Most of that goes back to the US.
All Hollywood majors except for Studiocanal (French), E One (Canadian) and Entertainment (British).