An offset not worth Knowing?

Alex Proyas regrets shooting Knowing in Melbourne. he told Miguel Gonzalez that Australia must rethink the rebates for international films if we want to keep them coming.

“Sadly, I regret bringing the production of Knowing to Australia,” says director Alex Proyas of his latest film, which stars Nicolas Cage and Rose Byrne and claimed the top spot at the US box office when it was released on March 20. “We genuinely thought that we would qualify for the 40 percent Producer Offset, because it’s essentially an all-Australian production.

Still to this day, I’m really upset that we were not able to qualify for that rebate, and I don’t understand why.”

The director says it’s ironic that Massachusetts, the American state where the story actually takes place, was offering a better rebate for production (35 percent) than the Location Offset (15 percent) they’d end up receiving in Australia. He believes that during his pre-production there was “an enormous lack of clarity” about how the Producer Offset would work, and then it was too late for them to move. The U$55m Knowing suffered as a result.
“Things changed and the goal post moved. I love shooting in Australia, it’s my home, but it’s a miracle that it was shot here, a fluke. If we’d had a little bit more forewarning, we would have made in the US. “The production lost many millions of dollars as a result. The studio, Summit Entertainment, were immensely supportive, but they were hurt by this scenario.” The director of Dark City and The Crow believes that the favourable current exchange rate gives big Hollywood films a viable reason to come to Australia, but the situation could change if the Aussie dollar went up against its US counterpart.