Britain’s Film4 Gets A Boost In The Budget
Brit pubcaster Channel 4 is upping the budget of its film financing division, Film4, to £15 million ($23.8 million) per year for the next five years. New budget, effective from 2011 onwards, reps a 50% increase on Film4’s current spend on feature development and financing, and marks the second cash hike to the budget this year. In May, pubcaster put a $3.2 million cash injection into its budget, returning it to its 2008 level of $15.9 million before the global economic downturn. News will be welcome to the Brit pic biz, which is still waiting to hear how lottery money from the U.K. Film Council, which was shuttered on July 26 and is now effectively in wind-down mode, will be distributed in the future. Film4 is one of the three major funding bodies in the U.K. that invest in local fare: the U.K. Film Council, which comes to halt in April 2012, invests an annual $22.8 million of lottery money into production of Brit pics, while BBC Films invests around $18 million a year.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118025614.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&ref=vertfilm