Guy
Pearce in the Jack Irish telemovies.
Garry Maddox, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports
Boosted by The
Great Gatsby and I,
Frankenstein, the value of Australian film and TV drama production
jumped 25 per cent last financial year.
According to Screen Australia's annual drama report, a sharp
decline in foreign production was more than matched by an increase in
big-budget films shot by Australian directors with Hollywood backing.
Drama production rose from $497 million in the previous financial
year to $623 million, including 28 films worth $296 million. While a healthy output,
it was below the record of $739 million in 2009-10.
On the basis they were driven by local
creative teams, the report counts as Australian Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, shot in
and around Sydney starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan,
and Stuart Beattie's I,
Frankenstein, shot in Melbourne with Yvonne Strahovski, Aaron
Eckhart and Bill Nighy.
Other smaller-scale films produced during the year included The Sapphires, Kath & Kimderella, Mental and the British
co-production The Railway
Man, starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth.
''It's been a strong year for feature production with a bigger
slate overall, boosted by high-budget Australian titles,'' the chief executive
of Screen Australia, Ruth Harley, said. She described the health of the sector
as ''pretty robust''.
Luhrmann praised the country's producer
offset, a 40 per cent tax rebate, for allowing him to shoot a movie here that
was set in 1920s New York: ''To work with Australia's skilled film technicians
and facilities and to bring large-scale projects like The Great Gatsby to
Australia, we can't have our head in the sand about the fact that the country
is a long way away.''
While the quality of recent Australian adult TV drama has been
impressive, spending fell 13 per cent to $279 million. As hours also dipped, by
6 per cent, there was a shift from series and serials towards mini-series and
telemovies.
The report counts House
Husbands, Offspring
and Puberty Blues
as mini-series alongside Howzat!
Kerry Packer's War, Underbelly:
Badness and the coming British co-production Mrs Biggs - The Untold Story behind
the Great Train Robbery.
There has also been a mini boom in telemovies - from five to 10 -
including Underground: The
Julian Assange Story, Beaconsfield
and the Jack Irish
films.
While Australia has often been a popular location for foreign
movies, the high value of the dollar meant that only three started shooting
last financial year.
And instead of huge Hollywood movies, they were lower-budget
productions from Japan (Hayabusa,
the Long Journey Home), India (From
Sydney with Love) and Nepal (Destination
Kathmandu).
But incentives brought Hollywood studios to Australia for
post-production and digital effects work worth $38 million on such big movies
as The Avengers,
Ted, Prometheus, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
and The Hunger Games.
NSW remained the dominant state for drama with production worth
$315 million compared with $212 million in Victoria, $65 million in Queensland
and $16 million in South Australia.
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