All articles by Adam Minns – Page 12
-
News
UK studio to seek London stock market listing
UK studio group Pinewood Shepperton has confirmed it is seeking to float this year.The group aims to refinance all its current debt and create a capital structure for further growth. 3i, the venture capital company which bankrolled Michael Grade and Ivan Dunleavy's purchase of Pinewood from Rank in February 2000, ...
-
News
Studios hit as UK gov't outlaws p&a tax schemes
US studios including Walt Disney, Miramax and Universalhave been stopped from accessing an estimated £400 million in UKtax-based funding to underwrite their p&a costs through another loophole intax regulations.Hardon the heels of closing down production funds on February 10, the InlandRevenue today extended its tightening up of tax rules to ...
-
News
Comment: UK tax changes hit middlemen
The UK government has overhauled tax-based funding for films by cutting out the middlemen.Still no doubt smarting from the negative press over last month's clamp down on GAAP funds, finance minister Gordon Brown this week set out to tighten up a sector where some funds, he said, were abusing the ...
-
News
UK film sector welcomes new funding rules
UK qualifying films will be able to access 20% of their budget in tax-related support under dramatic new rules unveiled by UK Chancellor Gordon Brown in today's (March 17) budget.Replacing tax-based support under Section 48, the new system will offer filmmakers a credit or rebate worth 20% of budgets that ...
-
News
ScreenSelect predicts massive DVD growth
Online DVD rental company ScreenSelect will send out more than 160,000 DVDs this month, the UK concern said this week.Launched six months ago, the company charges £14.99 a month for an 'all you can watch' subscription. Chairman Alex Chesterman said that the company expects turnover in films to more than ...
-
News
Rickman signs for Manchester United Ruined My Life
AlanRickman, Derek Jacobi, Jason Isaacs, Janet McTeer and Henry Goodman are set tostar in Manchester United Ruined My Life, the feature debut of director Mark Brozel.The adaptation of Colin Shindler's best-sellingnovel is a rites of passage story about a Jewish boy in 50s and 60s Manchester,growing up under the shadow ...
-
News
Disney looks to UK tax funds to support distribution costs
Walt Disney Studios isbelieved to be the latest Hollywood major to tap a UK tax-based fund tounderwrite their distribution costs.The studio is finalizing apact to licence about eight films to the Timeless Releasing scheme devised byUK tax financier Future Film in a deal understood to be worth up to £200m.The ...
-
News
UK Film Council offers digital projection funding for film clubs
The UK Film Council has launched a £500,000 National Lottery funded initiative to boost access to films in areas without a local screen.Film clubs and local film societies, community groups and mobile film exhibitors are to apply to the digital fund for non-theatrical exhibition. The organisations can secure up to ...
-
News
Minghella, Rickman back UK launch of Stellar Network
Jude Law, Anthony Minghella and Alan Rickman are lending their names to the Stellar Network, the starry New York networking organisation which is opening its doors in London.Other boardmembers from across film, theatre and television include director Peter Kosminsky, playwright and screenplay writer David Hare, showbusiness journalist Baz Bamigboye and ...
-
News
Section 48 scheme runs into 'difficulties'
Bedford Row Films, an apparently conventional scheme funding films under the UK's established Section 48 tax deferral rules, has written to investors saying it is 'facing difficulties'.The company told investors it has made advance payments on a slate of 19 films but has been 'let down badly' by the vendor ...
-
News
Working Title options best-seller
Working Title Films has optioned Star Of The Sea, Joseph O'Connor's best-selling novel set on a ship full of emigres fleeing the Irish potato famine.Told through the eyes of one passenger, a New York Times reporter, the acclaimed novel charts the fortunes of an array of characters on board the ...
-
News
Channel 4, Senator play the blame game
UK broadcaster Channel 4 has defended itself against legal proceeding from Senator Films over its closure of its stand alone film unit FilmFour, saying that it made a claim first against the German company.Senator, which had an output deal with FilmFour, filed a lawsuit this week against Channel Four for ...
-
News
Black Tiger wins First Light prize
UK Film Council chair Alan Parker and actors Dougray Scott and Olivia Williams were amongst the attendees at the First Light awards, the Film Council's National Lottery-funded programme for seven to 18 year olds.Jury members including Pierce Brosnan, Kenneth Branagh, Ray Winstone, Christopher Eccleston and Samantha Morton awarded the prize ...
-
News
Redbus takes on Sundance title from Warner Independent
The UK's Redbus Film Distribution has picked up UK rights to Sundance title We Don't Live Here Anymore from Warner Independent Pictures.Redbus aims for the acquisition to be the first in an ongoing relationship with the classics division, whose stablemate Warner Home Video handles Redbus' video distribution.The UK distributor will ...
-
News
Parker steps down as UK Film Council chair
Alan Parker is leaving as chairman of the UK Film Council after five years, the film support body confirmed this week.Stewart Till, vice-chairman of the council and head of UIP, is seen as a potential replacement for the position, which is expected to be filled over the summer. Parker will ...
-
News
Working Title launches training scheme
Working Title Films is launching a nation-wide search for three trainees who will work for a year at the UK's leading film company.The scheme, titled Action, aims to cut through film industry nepotism by providing a route into film for people without personal connections in the sector.Instead, the company, whose ...
-
News
...as Isle Of Man Film steps in to rescue The Libertine
The Libertine, one of the high-profile productions caught up in the UK's tax financing crisis, has secured replacement funding through a deal with Isle of Man Film.The Isle of Man typically provides around 25% of the budget as a direct equity investment, which would plug most of the 35% gap ...
-
News
UK government lambasts 'abusive' film financing schemes
Facing a PR backlash over its changes to tax rules this month, the UK government has sought to justify the move by saying that financiers were drawing up "abusive" schemes "at the expense of honest taxpayers."Although the threatened collapse of major productions such as The Libertine, Man To Man and ...
-
News
Tartan checks into the US
Tartan Films, Hamish McAlpine's UK distribution and production company, is launching a DVD-driven US arm called Tartan USA.McAlpine and Alan Partington, CEO of the group's home entertainment division, are already in Los Angeles setting up the US video operation and meeting video sales and distribution companies.The company will echo ...
-
News
Grosvenor Films turns to EIS scheme for Messages
Grosvenor Films, a new UK production company, aims to raise up to £2m through the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), a tax-based funding mechanism unaffected by this month's clamp down.The cash raised is to finance supernatural thriller Messages, which is scheduled to begin shooting this year at Ealing Studios. Grosvenor Films ...