UK sales agents will be able to access £100,000 to offer minimum guarantees (MG) when boarding UK projects, thanks to support from the government-backed UK Global Screen Fund (UKGSF), aiming for an August 2026 launch.
The fund now has an overall budget of £18m per year, of which about £800,000-£1m per year is allocated to the MG fund through the international distribution strand.
“Our intention is to look for companies with a demonstrable track record in the sales and distribution of UK films,” said Denitsa Yordanova, head of the UKGSF.
“It will be a competitive application process. We are aware that not all sales agents have the same track record in selling UK titles. Some might have ambition, but have not been able to get themselves attached to a UK title. We will consider both the track record and also the ambition.”
If sales agents are unable to attach a UK title in the 12-month period, the $134,000 must be returned to the UKGSF’s funding pot.
There is some flexibility in how the fund will define a UK sales agent. Several UK sales agencies have foreign investment, or are entirely owned by an overseas entity, such as HanWay Films, part of the US’s Cohen Media Group.
While Yordanova was unable to comment on individual companies, she said: “For those fully based and managed from the UK with no profits leaving the country, staff in the UK which are able to prove that the majority of activities of the corporate structure are in the UK, we will be looking for additional information to be satisfied,” says Yordanova. “It is a different process than our standard [25% maximum] foreign ownership requirement.”
This enhanced support has been agreed following a long period of consultation with the industry.
“Sales agents are finding themselves increasingly in a very challenging position,” she said, “especially when looking at European sales agents still participating in the Creative Europe media programme and benefiting from that. We’re looking at how we can help them be more risk-taking, on UK films in particular.”
She acknowledged it is “very much an experiment” with plans to keep iterating the funds based on industry feedback.
Fund breakdown
The breakdown of funds between the strands is planned as: £2.5m-3m per year for the distribution strand; £3m-£3.5m per year for the business development strand, which is “consistently one of the most over-subscribed”; £5m-6m for the co-production fund, which includes a new majority co-production strand for documentary and animation opening in September/October, in addition to the ongoing minority co-production offering; and £1.5-£2m per year for the new slate development fund.
The slate support is for three to five feature-length projects that fall under live-action, animation and documentary for both theatrical and TV, at later-stage development, and is set to open in July. Producers will not be able to receive slate funding two years in a row.
There is also £3m per year for the ‘promoting UK screen’ strategy, which includes international festivals and market activity, plus some additional UKGSF training and collaboration initiatives, such as support for the European Solidarity Fund for Ukrainian Films, plus administrative costs for running the fund.
“While we have a starting picture for the funds, it might not be the ending picture, because we will, based on demand, be able to allocate where needed,” says Yordanova.
External assessors are being brought in to help with selection for the majority of co-production and slate schemes, in anticipation of an increased volume of applications, working alongside the internal team. The UKGSF full-time team stands at 13, with recruitment underway for a full-time business affairs correspondent.
“We are very aware of criticism levied at public funds on who makes the decision, and what are the backgrounds of those people making decisions. We’re not looking for somebody to do the whole assessment,” said Yordanova.
“We have six criteria, they are weighted, they’re quite transparent. But for strands such as slate and majority co-production, we will be coming on board a lot earlier, so it is inevitable that there will be an editorial view that is tied to the audience potential, because there is simply not a big finance plan secured to be able to make that inference.
“This is very much an experiment, but we are also looking to test [having] a committee that, at the end, once we’ve processed the application, helps make that final decision,” she continued. ”We’ll be looking for a skillset relevant to the projects we’re considering. However, we have to be mindful of conflicts of interest as well.”
Yordanova said AI was not yet being used to make any funding decisions. “The BFI is looking at a working group that’s not just for UKGSF but across all funding strands, to look at what is happening around the impact on the industry of AI, and also how certain processes can be automated. I don’t think we have crossed the threshold yet on what is acceptable and standard use of AI versus judgments and review by humans.”
Co-production criteria
Some eyebrows were raised at the end of last year when Stevan Riley’s Monolith received £170,000 from the co-production strand. The UK minority co-producer is Sean Richard of Object Studios, co-producing with Catchlight Studios and Phoenix Pictures in the US. The project lists Leonardo DiCaprio as a producer and explores Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“Our funds have very extensive eligibility criteria that applicants must meet,” said Yordanova, who confirmed DiCaprio is taking more of an executive producer role on the project.
“We really do believe in the ability of UK directors and producers to create ambitious documentaries. This is why, in our majority co-production strand, we’re starting with a focus on documentary and animation. It’s really important for us to be able to give those documentaries a push, because it’s really hard to put the funding together.
“Even the higher budget documentaries are struggling,” she continued. “They’re not finding all the funding. Even if they have prominent executive producers, that’s often not enough. I can definitely assure you that Leonardo DiCaprio is not [personally] getting any funding from the [UKGSF] fund.
“In the case of Monolith, that has a British director [Stevan Riley] who has a track record of documentary, and the producer in the UK is Object Studios.
”There’s a lot of work that’s happening in the UK, and a lot of out-of-London elements to that project as well. You can see how in terms of our funding criteria, this project is eligible. It’s a great, ambitious documentary.”
Ireland, Germany and France are the top three territories that have been the most frequent co-producers on UKGSF-backed projects, followed by Greece, Belgium, US, Canada and Italy.
“There are more opportunities than before to collaborate with the UK,” added Yordanova. ”This fund is very much about collaboration, It’s about fostering new relationships, telling stories in a co-production format, business strategies in an international community.”
No comments yet