By Karl Quinn
The long-running negotiations to bring Disney's big-budget adventure film 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea to Australia have finally borne fruit, with the federal government announcing today that it has secured the most expensive movie ever to be made in Australia thanks to a one-off grant.
Arts minister Tony Burke and Prime Minister Julia Gillard jointly announced a $21.6 million payment to attract the major production, which represents a huge coup for the local film production sector. They claimed it "will result in substantial new investment in Australia and could create up to 2000 jobs".
Disney's 20,000 Leagues has been suggested to include actor Brad Pitt, centre, and director David Fincher, right.Credit: AP
No start date, locations or casting details have been announced for the production and Disney has not even confirmed that David Fincher, who has been linked with the project as director, is attached.
Rumours that Brad Pitt will be starring – and bringing his glamorous wife Angelina Jolie and their children to Australia – remain just that.
Nonetheless, confirmation after months of wrangling that the movie will indeed be made in Australia represents a significant win for the portion of the industry that depends on big-budget foreign productions.
Australia has had enormous difficulty attracting Hollywood productions since 2008 on account of the strong dollar. A number of Asian countries – including India, Nepal, Japan and China – have shot films here, but they operate on microbudgets. The five foreign productions shot in Australia in the financial years 2010-11 and 2011-12 spent a total of just $4 million here.
By contrast, Disney's foray down under – its first – will be a far more lucrative affair.
The $21.6 million the federal government has granted Disney is the equivalent to an increase in the foreign location offset from the standard 16.5 per cent to the 30 per cent rate for which the industry has long been lobbying.
Assuming the $21.6 million is the difference between the standard location offset and the 30 per cent figure - in other words, that it amounts to 13.5 per cent of the production's expenditure in Australia - Disney looks set to spend $160 million here.
That would tally with the prediction in February from former arts minister Simon Crean that if the deal with Disney came off it would be "bigger than The Wolverine – in fact, it will be the biggest production ever filmed in Australia".
(In April 2012, the government offered a similar one-off deal to The Wolverine, claiming its one-off grant of $12.8 million would result in $80 million of production activity and 2000 jobs.)
Today's announcement will be bitter-sweet for Simon Crean.
Fairfax Media understands the deal was in fact locked just before he launched his abortive one-man coup on March 21. Mr Crean was set to announce the deal on Monday, March 25, which would have capped a huge fortnight in which he had also announced his long-awaited National Cultural Policy on March 13.
Instead, he found himself unceremoniously sacked from his post and relegated to the backbenches.