Screen Australia defends listing Knowing as an Aussie film

Screen Australia has justified its decision to include Knowing as an Australian film in its newly published analysis of 2009 box office data, even though its director said last year that it had failed to meet the criteria to receive the Producer Offset tax benefit.

The film earned $7.6m at the Australian box office, a substantial part of the $54.8m total from Australian films reported by Screen Australia. Had it not been considered ‘Australian’, the box office share of Australian movies for the year would have dropped from 5 to 4.33 per cent.

A project from Australian director Alex Proyas, Knowing was shot in Melbourne and a substantial amount of post-production/VFX were also done in the country. However, it was not considered eligible for the Producer Offset, a situation that made Proyas say that he regretted having brought the film to Australia.

“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,” he said last March.