Spend on UK-produced films falls 18% in January-September 2025

The combined film and high-end TV production spend in the UK for the first three quarters of 2025 (January to September) increased by 17% to £5.5bn compared to £4.7bn in 2024, according to figures compiled by the British Film Institute (BFI). 

High-end TV spend from 138 projects comprised the biggest share, reaching £3.5bn, a 22% increase on 2024, despite seven fewer projects going into production in the same period. 

Total film production spend increased 12% to £2bn year-on-year due to a rise in inward international investment spend. But as in the high-end TV sector, the number of film productions that started principal photography in the first three quarters of the year fell to 120 from 131 in the equivalent period in 2024. 

UK film spend 

Despite the introduction of the Independent Film Tax Credit (IFTC) in 2025, spending on UK-produced films fell 18% in the same period to £124m (6% of the total) across 53 films. This compares to £152m on 66 UK-produced features in 2024.

Films to most recently start shooting in the period include Trudie Styler’s Rose’s Baby, produced by Styler’s Maven Screen Media, Rhys Marc Jones’ Black Church Bay produced by Ossian International and The Bureau, Bijan Sheibani’s The Arrival, produced by DMC Film and House Productions, and Anna Fredrikke Bjerke’s Let It Come Down produced by Backscatter Productions. 

International inward spend

The majority of the film spend came from 41 inward international feature productions that spent £1.9bn (91% of the total). This is up from the £1.6bn spent on 53 inward investment features in 2024. Productions included Disney’s Star Wars: Starfighter, Amazon MGM Studios’ The Thomas Crown Affair and Warner Bros’ Clayface.

A bright spot for the local production sector was a doubling in co-production spend between January and September 2025 year on year, to £52m (3% of the total) from 26 productions. 2024 had a £25.2m spend from 12 features.

However, this was a drop on the £156m in coproduction spend reported for Q1-Q3 2023, which was due to a small number of high-budget films classified as unofficial co-productions between the UK and France.

Coproductions to shoot this year include Costa Rican-Swedish filmmaker Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s The Wolf Will Tear Your Immaculate Hands, produced by the UK’s Quiddity Films with Sweden’s Hobab and Belgium’s Need Productions, and shot in Belfast. 

High-end TV spend 

For high-end TV (HETV), 138 productions began principal photography in the first three quarters of 2025 with a total UK spend of £3.5bn, a 22% increase on £2.9bn on 145 projects in the equivalent period in 2024.

Inward investment production spent £2.9m (82% of the total), up 21% to £2.4bn (84% of the total) in 2024.

UK productions accounted for £556m (16% of the total spend), up 25% from £446m (again 16% of total spend) compared to 2024. Co-productions accounted for £58m (2% of the total), almost four times the £12m of 2024. 

Inward investment HETV productions starting principal photography in the third quarter of 2025 included Warner Bros’ Harry Potter, AppleTV’s Ted Lasso series 4, Netflix’s Pride And Prejudice and AppleTV’s Silo series 4.

UK HETV productions that started filming in this period included BBC’s Dear England, The Rapture and California Avenue, Channel 4’s Tip Toe and ITV’s The Dark. 

The 2024 figures referenced above all relate to figures first reported by the BFI for this period. However, these figures often face later adjustments to reflect newly-tracked films, updated budgets or UK spend information, and postponements or cancellations.

This story has been updated to adjust the fall in the spend of UK-produced films in Q1-Q3 in 2025 to 18% compared to the same period in 2024.  

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