Feature film production in Australia

Over the past 30 years Australia has built a solid local fea­ture production industry. The number of features produced annually has grown from an average of 14 films a year in the 1970s to 30 films in the 1980s, 26 films in the 1990s and 23 per year since then.

Over the last decade, production activity by foreign fea­tures increased significantly, with numerous high-budget titles, mostly from the US, shot in Australia. Titles include Fool’s Gold, Ghost Rider, The Great Raid, the Matrix films, Peter Pan, Star Wars (Episodes II & III), Stealth, Superman Returns, Son of the Mask, The Quiet American and Where the Wild Things Are. Since 2000/01 foreign films have spent an average of $156 million in Australia, peaking at $258 million in 2004/05. In 2006/07, expenditure increased to $102 million, higher than the previ­ous year’s low of $23 million but below the seven-year average.

The AFC has tracked the production of Australian feature films since 1970. Total production budgets (in 2007 dollars) averaged $21 million annually in the 1970s, increasing to $133 million during the 1980s and remaining around this level ($136 million per year) during the 1990s. In the seven years since 2000/01, the average increased to $160 million. Total budgets exceeded $200 million twice during the 1990s and twice in the seven years since (in 2003/04 and 2006/07).

The total budgets for Australian features can fluctuate annually, due largely to the impact of a small number of fully foreign-financed, usually high-budget, features.

Co-productions and foreign films shot in Australia have been tracked since 1990/91. During the 1990s, 13 features with total budgets of $90 million were made as co-produc­tions. In the seven years since July 2000, 17 co-production features have been produced, with total budgets of $269 million.

Foreign feature production activity increased during the 1990s, with nine foreign films shot here in the first half of the decade and 16 in the second half. These 25 foreign features had total budgets of $937 million, with 16 originating from US companies, three from Japan, two each from Hong Kong and India, and one each from Korea and the UK. In the seven years since, there have been 43 foreign features shot in Aus­tralia, with total budgets just over $2 billion. Since 2000/01, 27 foreign features have originated from US companies (see: Focus: Foreign drama production in Australia). In the six years from 1994/95 to 1999/00, expenditure in Australia by foreign features averaged $65 million annually and in the seven years since it has averaged $163 million. However, in 2005/06 expenditure dropped to $23 million.

Expenditure in Australia by features (Australian, co-pro­duction and foreign) has increased fairly steadily since 1994/95, when the AFC began monitoring this indicator. It reached a high of $449 million in 2003/04 due to a number of high-budget titles that commenced that year, including the Aus­tralian animated feature Happy Feet and the US features Son of the Mask, Star Wars – Episode III and Stealth. While spending in Australia dropped in 2005/06 to $135 million, it increased to $333 million in the following year, slightly above the seven-year average of $291 million.

Over the 13 years from July 1994 to June 2007, local fea­tures spent 96 per cent of their total production budgets in Australia, while co-productions spent 48 per cent and foreign features 53 per cent.