Encore Annual 2010: Year in film
Young audiences reconnected with Australian films, but there’s much to be done to ensure they’ll keep coming back.
It’s a cliché: Australians don’t like Australian films. Luckily, a series of successful films have started to dispel the myth. The industry has made contact with its audience, and it could be the slow start of a new love story between them.
The year began with an uplifting statistic. Not only had the Australian box office reached a historic peak in 2009 with $1.09 billion, but Australian films had also taken a 5.02 percent share ($54.8m), upon the five-year average of 4 percent and the best local performance since 2001 (7.8 percent). This figure was inflated by Alex Proyas’ Knowing ($7.6m), which received last minute Australian status when it was granted the final certificate – which it had previously been denied – for the Producer Offset.
The revelation reignited discussions about the transparency of the Offset process, and opened the door to non-Australian themed projects led by Australian creatives, previously ineligible for the incentive.
At press time, the top 10 Australian films of 2010 had made $45m at the box office. Of 27 released films, only eight had earned more than $1m (see table on page 4), and only Tomorrow, When the War Began had surpassed the $10m mark – but its $13.4m was down from last year’s highest achiever Mao’s Last Dancer ($15m).
The first two spots went to films that prioritised entertainment and understood the importance of an attractive cast and targeting a young demographic.
The Kings of Mykonos: Wog Boy 2 came in third, but its total was less than half the amount its predecessor The Wog Boy achieved in 2000. The fact that Animal Kingdom earned only $20,000 less than the much more commercial The Kings of Mykonos, despite its complexity and much darker tone, is proof of its undeniable success.
Animal Logic’s production Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole underperformed worldwide; its U$135m were below the expectations for animated CG movies, particularly those released in stereoscopic 3D.
The WW1 film Beneath Hill 60, vampire flick Daybreakers and romantic comedy I Love You Too all had a decent run, but left cinemas with a sense of unfulfilled potential.
This is where we draw the difficult line between box office success and disappointment. Twentieth Century Fox tried hard, but was ultimately unable to position the Nadia Tass drama Matching Jack as a feel-good movie. Fox’s Australian release in years– excluding Baz Luhrmann’s Australia – didn’t even cross the $1m mark.
Other dramas that received generally positive reviews also failed to connect with their target audiences; from the underrated The Waiting City (Hopscotch) to South Solitary (Icon), The Tree (Paramount/Transmission) and Summer Coda (Jump Street/Sharmill). International stars such as Geena Davis and John Hurt couldn’t help, respectively, the Americanised Accidents Happen (Hopscotch) and Belinda Chayko’s Lou (Kojo Pictures); the former made $157,000 and the latter, a mere $60,000.
Genre films also underperformed, with the wide release The Loved Ones (Madman) as the main offender, followed by micro-releases Triangle (Icon) on three screens, and Road Train, released only in Adelaide by Pinnacle Film. Both achieved a similar result of around $11,000.
Independently-distributed films such as The Horseman (Umbrella Entertainment), The Tumbler and Playing for Charlie (PackScreen) only earned a couple of thousands of dollars in their blink-and-you’ll-miss them limited releases, but exceptions such as Girl Clock! showed great potential – $53,000 from a three-screen opening in Brisbane and a 10-week season on one screen only.
Literally a galaxy away, at the other end of the box office, Avatar became the highest grossing film of all time; locally, it doubled the results of its predecessor Titanic (1997) with $115,568,684 – and U$2.7 billion worldwide. The 3D craze that followed was inevitable and helped Disney have its best year ever in Australia, with Alice in Wonderland and Toy Story 3 ($42.41m).
Australian filmmakers started exploring their stereoscopic options. Many have created 3D shorts, but Andrew Wight’s production Sanctum – under the guidance of James Cameron himself – shot on the Gold Coast and post-produced in Melbourne, will be the country’s first live action 3D release next February, via Universal Pictures.
Another mid-range 3D project is currently in production in Queensland; Bait is the first feature co-produced by Australia and Singapore, at a time when co-productions are being encouraged by all screen agencies and organisations such as Ausfilm.
According to Screen Australia’s Drama Report 2009/10, 37 local features were produced during that financial year, with expenditure of $265m. This slate includes titles with commercial potential such as The Cup, Griff the Invisible, Red Dog, The Reef and Sanctum.
WHAT COMES NEXT
Former Minister for the Arts Peter Garrett launched the 2010 Review of the Australian Independent Screen Production Sector, inviting practitioners, companies and industry bodies to comment around the sustainability of independent film and TV production, the Producer Offset, the Location/PDV Offsets, the Government support programs, and the co-production and free trade agreements.
In its submission to the review, Screen Australia identified medium-budget films, low-budget one-off documentaries, emerging media and games as priorities that should be addressed immediately, and said the Producer Offset cannot work alone – therefore, the agency argued it requires more direct funding to support medium-budget films.
SPAA had other plans to address the same situation, proposing a market door film debt facility ($90m over three years) that would encourage distributors to finance $7-30m feature films. The Coalition took it on board (reducing the fund to $60m) and promised to set it up if elected, as well as allowing interim Producer Offset assessment so producers could apply for the rebate before the end of the financial year, without the need for a Special Purpose Vehicle – another Offset problem that has been raised since its introduction.
Of course the Coalition did not win in the end, and these proposals remain in limbo. There is hope; perhaps the review will finally set these and other vital changes in motion, but the wait is excruciating for many – and it might be too late for some.
The international attraction rebates were enhanced this year, lowering the expenditure threshold from $5m to $500,000 for the PDV offset, and eliminating the
Location requirement of 70 percent Australian spend of total production budget for $15-50m projects.
But it’s no secret that a strong Australian dollar is poison for the screen industry, particularly in terms of its ability to attract international productions and post-production work. The changes were not enough to compensate for a currency that reached parity with its US counterpart, as well as increased competition from other countries and American states offering more attractive incentives. As a result, only a couple of Indian films used Australia as a location, with no other international features scheduled in the foreseeable future. Even Screen Australia has warned eight months in advance that the total feature expenditure is likely to drop at the end of next financial year due to the absence of a big international blockbuster.
Post-production companies are suffering as a result, with Panavision planning to sell its lighting equipment division Panalux and many others forced to reduce their staff to the bare minimum. The situation is so desperate that an online petition was launched in mid-November, asking Prime Minister Julia Gillard to “save the industry” by increasing the PDV/Location incentives to 30 percent. After all, if New Zealand made an extra effort to save The Hobbit, why can’t Australia appreciate the importance of its screen industry and protect it by helping it remain internationally competitive.
