The Balearic Islands in Spain, which includes Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza, have put forward a proposal to the Spanish Government for a new regional incentive to attract more film and TV productions.
“We are trying to establish a regional fund for the Balearic region, which will consist of a tax break or rebate, similar to the one offered already in Valencia,” Pedro Barbadillo, director of the Mallorca Film Commission, told ScreenDaily.
The Valencian government currently offers up to 20% of local spend in the region to international producers, and there’s the added advantage of a state-of-the-art studio in Ciudad De La Luz.
But Barbadillo insists the reason for needing this incentive is not because of the competition with other Spanish regions, but the tough international competition. “We cannot attract certain kinds of films if we don’t have the same financial conditions as in Italy, France, Germany, and even Malta, who are big competitors,” he says.
That said, Mallorca has still done a good job recently of attracting high profile film and TV productions to its shores, including The Inbetweeners movie , which shot on the island earlier this year, and Daphna Kastner’s Holiday In Mallorca (working title), starring Harvey Keitel, which is expected to arrive next year. The producers of Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski brothers’Cloud Atlas, starring Tom Hanks, are also considering shooting on the islands.
The islands’ new incentive proposals have been put to a working group set up within the Spain Film Commission, which represents the interests of the regional commissions, with the help of the association of production directors. This group is currently drafting a white paper report analysing the entire country’s film sector and how money can be attracted through incentives, using other countries as templates.
“If you look at Germany, in the last two years since setting up their incentives, they have attracted about €12.5m from productions, while Spain has lost about €1.3m over the same period due to films wanting to come to Spain but didn’t because other countries had better incentives,” explains Barbadillo.
The Spain Film Commission is inviting other bodies, such as the producers association FAPAE, to join the project, so that they can put forward a single unified proposal to the government highlighting all the different regional proposals.
The final document is expected to be ready by September, but with the general elections taking place in November, final negotiations aren’t expected to take place until at least the end of 2011.
Source : ScreenDaily
