by FilmInk Staff
A new report says Australian film policy is losing the audience, while the national slate is too narrow, too adult-skewing, and cinemas are being neglected in the places communities are growing.
Australia is making more local films than ever, but admissions per Australian film have fallen around 60 per cent since the 2007-08 policy reset.
A new independent report by cinema executive Nick Hayes argues that Australia’s film problem is not audience indifference, but a structural failure to connect Australian films with Australian audiences.
Made, Not Seen: The Misalignment of Australian Film, Cinema and Audiences finds that since the 2007-08 screen-policy reset, Australia has sharply increased production while audience reach per film has fallen. The report argues that the policy system has become much better at funding films into existence than ensuring Australians can actually find and see them.
Key findings
Australian feature output increased by 132 per cent after the 2007-08 reset.
Admissions per Australian film fell by around 60 per cent.
Average box office per Australian film fell by around 58 per cent.
Tickets sold per 100 Australians declined by 26 per cent.
Australian production is heavily concentrated in drama and documentary, while broad-audience genres such as family, animation, comedy and genre films remain under-supplied.
Australian releases skew adult: M and MA15+ classifications together account for almost 70 per cent of local films, while G and PG titles make up only about 15 per cent.
The report argues Australia is too often making the wrong mix of films for the available cinema audience, then releasing them into weak or overcrowded windows.
The system prioritises production volume while underweighting release, marketing, exhibition and audience access.
Cinema access has become a neglected planning and cultural infrastructure issue, especially in outer-metropolitan and regional communities. Hayes said the findings point to a widening disconnect between public investment and public encounter.
“We are making more Australian films than ever before, but far fewer Australians are seeing each one,” Hayes said.
“This is not an audience indifference problem. It is a policy design problem.”
The report says the issue is not that drama and documentary lack cultural value. It is a production system dominated by those categories, with too few family, comedy, animation and other broad-audience films, limits who Australian cinema can reach before marketing begins.
Classification compounds the problem. A slate heavily weighted to M and MA15+ films has fewer natural pathways to younger, family and intergenerational audiences.
“In blunt terms, we are too often making the wrong films for the audience we say we want to reach,” Hayes said.
The report argues that national screen policy remains heavily production-first, while promotion, distribution, exhibition and audience outcomes receive much weaker attention. It says a film can be funded, completed and formally counted as a success within the system while still failing to reach a meaningful audience in cinemas.
It also identifies a funding imbalance. The report estimates that only 0.7 per cent of total public screen support reaches exhibition and audience-facing activity, and argues that Australia does not lack screen funding in the abstract. It lacks audience-weighted funding.
Cinema as cultural infrastructure
The report expands the argument beyond screen funding. It warns that cinema access is being designed out of major growth areas and transport-led precincts.
Along the Sydney Metro City & Southwest corridor, from Waterloo to Punchbowl, the report finds there is no walkable cinema until Bankstown despite dense, diverse and growing communities around the stations. Its conclusion is direct: this is not market failure. It is a planning failure.
“As shocking as it is unsurprising in NSW, planning treats clubs and their extractive entertainment as civic infrastructure, while cinemas and live performance venues are absent unless history happened to leave one behind,” Hayes said.
“Canterbury-Bankstown is one of the starkest examples of the imbalance this report identifies. Despite its size, density, cultural diversity and the impending Metro line, it now has a near absence of cinema infrastructure,” Hayes said.
“At the same time, recent NSW Liquor & Gaming data for clubs and pubs shows combined poker-machine losses in the LGA exceeding $600 million across the latest six-month reporting period. That is not a neutral entertainment mix. It is a planning outcome.”
The proposed reboot
Alongside its findings, Made, Not Seen proposes a practical, budget-positive reboot intended to reconnect stories, cinemas and audiences. Its centrepiece is a disciplined 12-film Australian theatrical slate dated to meet demand, backed by stronger local marketing, festival reform, improved reporting and a targeted exhibition renewal program.
The report also proposes tapering the maximum combined federal and state incentive level for very large foreign productions to $80 million, arguing this could redirect between $80 million and $150 million into local production, marketing, festivals and exhibition support.
Hayes said the reboot was not a call for a major new spending program, but a modest rebalancing within an existing screen funding system of roughly $1.3 billion.
“This report is not arguing for less ambition. It is arguing for a system that backs Australian films all the way to the audience,” he said.
Hayes, recently appointed CEO of Independent Cinemas Australia, said the report was researched and written in a personal capacity and began before he took on the role.
About the report
Made, Not Seen: The Misalignment of Australian Film, Cinema and Audiences is the second report in Nick Hayes’ Australian box office research series. It draws on long-run box office and admissions data, release analysis, cinema access mapping and policy review to examine how Australian films are funded, released and encountered.
