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We’ve Finally Qualified For The Producer Offset!
After a long ordeal, Knowing has finally qualified for Screen Australia’s Producer Offset.
The Producer Offset is a refundable tax offset for producers of Australian feature films, television and other projects. It is worth 40% of Australian production expenditure and was put in place to encourage private investment in Australian film production.
Knowing has struggled to be recognised as an eligible Australian film due to the lack of Australian content, therefore Screen Australia held off on awarding it the Producers Offset, until now.
The criterion for the offset includes the need to have significant Australian content or be an official co-production. This means that Screen Australia has to be satisfied that the film can be considered Australian in regard to the subject matter, the place where the film was made, the nationalities of the people who took part in it and the details of production expenditure.
Knowing stars Australian Rose Byrne (alongside Nicolas Cage) and has a mainly Australian supporting cast. It was filmed in Melbourne with a local crew. According to director Alex Proyas, Knowing brought many jobs to Australia. However, the film was set in Boston, the Australian actors used American accents and it was financially backed by Summit Entertainment; an American film studio.
When Knowing was first rejected and not awarded the offset, Proyas critised the decision arguing that it was essentially an all-Australian production and thus should qualify for the rebate.
Screen Australia eventually agreed (interestingly, in a recent report about box office figures for Australian films, Knowing's $7.6 million local haul was included in Screen Australia's claim that 2009 was the highest domestic box office since 2001), as Knowing was recently awarded the offset.
However, George Miller's Justice League: Mortal recently made the headlines when it was not granted the offset due to the subject matter and scriptwriters not being Australian. The decision may have meant that Australia has missed out on major projects that could have been very beneficial to the Australian film industry.
Proyas, whose credits include The Crow, Dark City (shot in Sydney) and I, Robot, is extremely pleased with the decision saying, sending out a press release with the following statement: "The production brought a great deal of work to the local industry and I hope that with this film now qualifying, more projects of its type can be made locally. I feel that the Australian film industry will benefit enormously from this decision."