Screen design guild director: ‘Wolverine VFX work must stay in Australia’
The director of the Australian Production Designers Guild has called on the producers of Wolverine to keep the VFX work in Australia as speculation grows that it may go offshore.
George Liddle, also the production designer of films Dark City and Daybreakers, told Encore: “It seems outrageous to dump some of the work overseas. It goes against the spirit of the government’s policy to attract big films here.”The call comes as an announcement around Wolverine’s key VFX vendors is expected soon, and off the back of substantial financial input from the Australian Government to the film.
Wolverine received an extra $12.8m from the Federal Government to film in Australia on top of the usual 16.5% location tax offset that international productions are eligible for when shooting here. The $12.8m bumps the production to the equivalent of 30% rebate of the film’s estimated $80m Australian expenditure – The film industry is currently lobbying the government for an across-the-board 30% location offset.
While Australia also offers a 30% post production offset, films can not use both incentives from the same allocated value of the production.
Sorry George but the Australian government should stop playing this subsidy game. If as he suggests the Federal government is putting up 24 million for 80 million dollars worth of work done this is not sustainable and very poor value for money. No other manufacturing industry is getting this level of subsidy. Given the high state of the Australian dollar and the incredible mobility of this technology across a large number of countries we would be better not to try and compete. And to make matters worse the Federal government is not even investing in Wolverine. It is a straight out gift to a Hollywood studio.
Harry – FYI – Theres subsidy’s even in American States to attract production. It breed’s experience into an industry to work on this stuff. So we shouldn’t complete? Just leave it to india to do the VFX?