Ausfilm Week London starts today and for the next four days aims to foster more film and TV co-productions between Australian producers and their UK counterparts. The week of events will include 15 Australian production companies and 50 from the UK.
Ireland will consider increasing its current EUR 50 million (USD 63 million) cap on eligible expenditure that qualifies for the country’s filming incentive programme, from 2016. The current Section 481 filming incentive will convert to a tax credit from next year and the value will rise to 32%.
Iconic visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) has officially opened its new London office. The firm is a division of Lucasfilm and was initially set up in the mid-70s to pioneer the innovative visual effects needed for the first Star Wars movie.
From January 2015, Pinewood MBS Lighting is set to become the exclusive provider of lighting equipment to productions filming at Pinewood Studios and Shepperton Studios near London. The deal is the result of an agreement between Pinewood and management company MBS3.
Disney has been paid tax credits of nearly GBP 170 million from location filming in the UK since the incentive was launched in 2007. Payments peaked last year at a little over GBP 50 million when Disney subsidiary Marvel filmed Thor: The Dark World largely in London.
Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar has spent ten days filming on location in and around Abu Dhabi for his new thriller Baby. The city is a particularly popular setting for Bollywood movies because of the proximity to Mumbai and films can now get a 30% filming incentive.
A group of leading Hollywood filmmakers have successfully convinced the major US studios to help ailing film stock manufacturer Eastman Kodak and keep the company in business. The studios will likely commit to purchasing film each year, despite the rise of digital movie-making.
A short location shoot for Star Wars: Episode VII reportedly starts today on the island of Skellig Michael off the coast of County Kerry in south-western Ireland. The island became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996 and is home to the ruins of a medieval monastery.