Screen Australia and Fremantle Media establish fund to develop content aimed at Netflix
A new grant has been established by Screen Australia and Fremantle Media aimed at helping Australian writers develop drama concepts to sell to international streaming operations like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
The latest round of funding for writers may also give birth to a film from the creators of the Bondi Hipsters brothers Connor and Christiaan Van Vuuren, who have been handed a share of $3.2m in funding to develop a feature length musical based on the Kiwi Assassins characters.
The Enterprise Industry Program has been spawned from the Enterprise Classic program, which Screen Australia chief operating officer Fiona Cameron told Mumbrella was moving on from being about a company’s business plan to people coming with “large scale development opportunities, or ideas for distribution, financing and how to get to the audience”.
Is it appropriate for Screen Australia to be subsidising the production and development activities of global, foreign owned, billion dollar, vertically integrated media corporations like Fremantlemedia and NBCUniversal?
Ronnie you are spot on. Its absolutely not all right in my book for Screen Australia to continue down the path of funding foreign owned corporations to grow their catalogues.
Gotcha. We should only accept 100% overseas content even if there is an Australian story to be told.
Isn’t it more about funding and investing in Australian writers and film professionals to develop titles and compete in an international market which includes Australia? The future is now .
How does this renew the local writing skill set when the locals are nearly starved to death and the skilled commercial writers are plucked from local ranks? (Or does it just maintain the visionless status quo?) Shouldnt there be some creative thought about trying to keep some talent and decent earnings production in oz?