Written by James Peak on Jul 28, 2009. Posted in On Location

Filming in Mexico

Nearly a year ago, swine flu hit Mexico, and as global concerns of a pandemic grew, the country briefly ground to a halt. Schools closed, and public transport stopped. Even movie theatres closed for up to three weeks across the country, hampering the premieres of X Men Origin: Wolverine and Angels and Demons in May. Although the flu was quickly and efficiently contained, the negative press had an inevitable impact on Mexican tourism. But how has the mighty Mexican film industry held up to the pandemic?

The Mexican audio-visual industry is a huge market both in consumption and production. In fact, it’s the fifth largest market for movie tickets in the world, with 182 million tickets sold in 2008. According to the National Chamber of the Film Industry, direct spend from companies on feature films shot in Mexico was over USD150 million in 2008, with another USD30 million on telenovelas, documentaries and reality shows. And these numbers are rising as the industry goes from strength to strength, as Hugo Villa, Director of Production of the Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE) explains:

“The boost in our domestic film industry is due to several federal state-funded aid programmes, which total over USD50 million. The grants are designed for Mexican projects, but countries such as Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, USA, Argentina and Brazil have benefited from them via co-productions, in most cases arranged through film and cultural cooperation treaties.”

Mexico City-based CineConcepto CEO Francisco Murguia, explains that:

“Local production has sky-rocketed in the last three years thanks to the tax stimulus which allows taxpayers to invest in film productions, and government-controlled funds that also give filmmakers access to additional funding. 46 Mexican films were released in 2008, and this year, there will be over 50 films produced in Mexico.”

As you’d expect, Mexico City is the hub of the industry. But some states make big investments in infrastructure. Jalisco, for example, has recently developed a high-spec VFX, animation and video game production centre in Guadalajara. Other states like Durango, Zacatecas and Baja California regularly provide soft money for many types of productions.

So what impact did the swine flu pandemic have on this sophisticated and established industry? Nothing much, according to Hugo Villa, who is clear that all the film industry infrastructure is still in place, and unaffected:

“At IMCINE we contacted all local film promoting organiSations during and after the hardest part of the isolation phase. Other than a few minor adjustments, like having more antibacterial gel for crews, and paying for cab fare so workers could avoid taking public buses, all shooting planned went on without a glitch and no cancellations were made, except for a couple of international TV documentaries that decided to pull their crews out of Mexico until the alert was over, although they came back shortly after and finished their shoots.”

It seems that the Mexican audio-visual industry did not easily catch cold. Now that the pandemic has been contained in Mexico, there are big-budget, international productions firing up all the time. Already shooting is the highly anticipated Mexico-Italy co-production Trip to Tulum, based on a script by Federico Fellini, and IMCINE are in talks with three major Hollywood studio productions interested in filming in Mexico in the following months. The overwhelming message that comes from producers is ‘we’re over the flu and its business as usual’.