BFI Boss on U.K.’s ‘Transformative’ New Indie Film Tax Credit: ‘My Phone Is Full of Euphoric Producers’
variety.comAlex Ritman Wednesday’s announcement that the British government would be introducing the new Independent Film Tax Credit sparked a response that was nothing short of jubilant across the entire sector.
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. “My phone is just full of euphoric producers and filmmakers who were saying, in really meaningful terms, that they were looking at their finance plans and rethinking their ability to set up a film in the U.K.
this year,” he explains. “There’s a lot of energy. It will mean the difference between films happening and not happening.” But what Roberts describes as the “mic drop” moment was the speed of implementation of the new scheme.
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