How To Lose Friends Keeps The UK Film Industry On Track [ 13/11/2007 ]

LONDON -- Inward investment, overseas cash invested in filmmaking here, stood at 324 million pounds ($667.5 million) for the first six months of the year compared with 253 million pounds for the first half of 2006 thanks to films like "Sweeney Todd" and "The Dark Knight," according to the latest report from the U.K. Film Council.

Overall, the first six months of 2007 saw 420 million pounds ($865.3 million) pumped into film production in the U.K. both here and from abroad, hitting the same combined levels as the year-ago period.

U.K. co-productions plummeted from 42 in the first half of 2006 to just nine in the first six months of 2007, the Council said.

But such productions "have significantly picked up" in the third quarter of 2007, with another 20 co-productions made in the U.K., bringing the total this year to 29.

Homegrown U.K. productions keeping the overall 420 million pounds production figure on track include "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People," "Brideshead Revisited," "St. Trinian's," "The Edge of Love" and "Revolutionary Road."

"It's been a strong half year of consolidation for film production in the U.K. Currently, domestic films are steady, and we've had strong inward investment from the U.S. again this year," U.K. Film Council CEO John Woodward said. "When you couple that with the incredibly strong boxoffice for British films, you can see that the underlying trends are very healthy."

Film fans have flocked to British cinemas in 2007, with admissions hitting almost 117 million by the end of August, an increase of 12% from the same period in 2006.

Stuart Kemp, adapted from Screen, 13 November 2007

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