Screen Australia invests $11m in new feature films and TV dramas
Shane Jacobson as Kenny
‘Oddball’, a comedy from the makers of 2006 Aussie film ‘Kenny’, and the a two-part television biopic about Gina Rhinehart are among four feature films and four TV dramas receiving $11m in funding from Screen Australia.
Award winning children’s animation series The New Adventures of Figaro Pho has also been commissioned for a second series on ABC3.
The $11m is set to trigger $70m in production spend, according to the announcement from Screen Australia.Oddball, about an eccentric chicken farmer who saves a colony of penguins by putting his sheepdog on their island has been written by Peter Ivan, and will star Shane Jacobson, who played the unappreciated toilet cleaner Kenny in the 2006 film he co-wrote with his brother Clayton Jacobson, who will direct it.
Screen Australia does excellent PR. To say that $11 million from Screen Australia will trigger $70 million in production is correct. However the features film will get a 40% Federal tax rebate and the television projects a 20% rebate for eligible Australian spend. It sounds good for Screen Australia and makes the pollies happy but it is really another sleight of hand, layered subsidy.
… without which basically nothing would get made.
…and make no money, chalk another one up for the ‘Sheltered Workshop’ that is Scream Australia. Who said ‘Yes Minister/Prime Minister was a work of fiction!
Why isn’t Gina funding her own bio pic with her burger change?
You’d like to think things might change, but it never does, the same old producers getting the same old money and on and on it goes