The UK Culture, Media & Sport Committee has officially recommended a levy on all streamers’ UK revenues to help the local film industry.
If the last few years have proved anything to the British screen sector, it’s that being a service industry to Hollywood definitely comes with a few strings attached. Pandemics, periodic strikes and a US president who seems hellbent on defining his own economy has resulted in serious turbulence for the UK film and high-end TV industry. Not least the huge loss of sustained work that was suffered when Hollywood went into shutdown for almost six months during the strikes of 2023.
A recent inquiry into the state of the sector by the UK Culture, Media & Sport Committee (CMS) saw those quizzed asking overwhelmingly for a levy on streamers operating in the UK, with that cash put back into home-grown production. This isn’t without precedent: plenty of other European countries have a similar system in place. It certainly became apparent, during a recent drop in US co-funding for high-end TV productions, just how dependent the UK sector is on inward investment.
Count this as a win, then: the CMSC is recommending to the government that a levy be introduced and enshrined in law if necessary (per Deadline).
To be clear, this is just a recommendation, and the government has outright dismissed the idea in the past. The CMS is an influential body, though, so hopefully this will get the idea over the line and make the UK industry just that bit more self-sustaining.
Naturally, US streaming companies aren’t overjoyed about the prospect. Companies such as Amazon and Netflix have warned in the past that such a measure could lead to a drop in co-production funding, but then, they would say such things when faced with the prospect of their growth being dented, we suppose.
One final caveat, too: as far as we can tell, any funding would only go towards supporting high-end TV production, meaning the independent sector of the British film industry would be no better off. Perhaps even worse off given that it would now have to compete for resources with a high-end TV sector buoyed with a guaranteed supply of boosted income. Perhaps there are also plans to address this issue as well, but none that we’ve able to find as of yet. More on this as we hear it.
