B.C.s prodn blues

July 2024 · 6 minute read

Film, TV revs drop 30% in British Columbia

A dramatic drop in film and TV revenues in British Columbia is expected to knock this year’s total below C$1 billion ($635 million) for the first time since 1999.

“Our estimates are off by about 30% this year in terms of overall revenues,” Rainmaker Digital Pictures chief exec Bob Scarabelli, told Daily Variety. “It’s right across the industry here. It’s huge.”

Scarabelli notes TV series activity has plunged and budgets have been cut. He added that Rainmaker’s revenues are down 15% and some of his peers are down 50%.

Tom Adair, exec director of the British Columbia Council of Film Unions, told Daily Variety that the final 2002 figure would not be close to C$1 billion and noted that there is currently close to 50% unemployment in the local business.

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New three-year collective agreements with industry unions — with no wage increases in the first year — have been negotiated and are expected to be ratified in the next two weeks. About 12,000 of the 25,000 people directly employed in B.C. production are unionized.

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Susan Croome, the new B.C. film commish, will lead a high-powered sales mission to Los Angeles on Dec. 9. B.C. Film Commission stats indicate feature film production is up slightly this year, largely due to a few major projects such as “X-Men 2,” but the number of TV series and telepics is way down.

Only seven features and five films for television are currently lensing in the province — about one half the number in production at this time two years ago. Ten TV series are now shooting here, less than one third of the total under way in 2000.

Sinking below Toronto

A 30% drop would lead to revenues of C$770 million ($489 million) in British Columbia, which considers itself the third largest production center in North America, after Los Angeles and New York. This would push Vancouver well below archrival Toronto, which is not as hard hit because it does more Canadian television production.

“We have to be competitive,” said Scarabelli, who is pricing his firm’s services more keenly and is hunting new business from Asian commercial producers and looking for more Canadian work.

Stephen Katz, co-founder of the Los Angeles-based Center for Entertainment Industry Data & Research, said the slowdown in Vancouver is not surprising since that location relies heavily on telepics. Preliminary stats show a 41% decline for Vancouver in that category this season, compared with a 19% decline in Ontario and a 23% decline worldwide.

Katz, who is prepping a comprehensive report on the category for release next year, cites two key factors for the B.C. decline: the contraction of demand for telepix worldwide and the migration of such projects to other parts of Canada.

Location fatigue

“There have been some anecdotal concerns that all the filming in British Columbia is possibly starting to lead to location fatigue,” Katz added. “There are also some possible concerns about the depth of available crews in Vancouver.”

As for features, Katz preliminarily estimates the level of B.C. activity has fallen at least 10% over 2001 while overall Canadian activity is up 2%. Vancouver lost losing the “Terminator 3” shoot earlier this year to Los Angeles.

The decline has come despite a 2000 agreement by unions repping 10,000 film and TV technicians in British Columbia to drop their rates by 13% to win back cable and syndicated telepic business (Daily Variety, March 29, 2000).

Across the border in Seattle, 150 miles south of Vancouver, the scenery is about the same but the film industry is in even worse shape. Industry sources there blame British Columbia for the steep decline in business, largely because of the lower Canadian dollar and provincial tax credits and other government incentives.

In the 1990s about 60% of Washington’s production business was film, 40% television. “Now there is zero percent film,” said Scott Jonas, president of Jonas Jensen Studios in Auburn, Wash.

Washington washout

Revenue from the film and television industry in Washington state totaled only $21.3 million in 2001, less than half the $50.5 million reported in 2000, according to the Washington state film office.

About 4,000 are directly employed in the industry in the state, about 1,200 of them actors, most based in the Seattle area. Unemployment is high and the outlook is bleak, with the exception of post-production and other computer-based businesses, which have bucked the trend.

In a report earlier this year, the CEIDR found that Canada’s implementation of new production subsidies in 1998 appeared to have been a factor in the 18% decline of U.S. feature spending to $3.24 billion last year from $3.93 billion in 1998; U.S. films with budgets above $50 million dropped to $1.51 billion last year from $2.3 billion in 1998.

During the same period, the total budget of features shot in Canada soared from $430 million in 1998 to $1.05 billion in 2001. Most of that gain came in mid-range pics between $10 million and $50 million, as that category rose from $309 million in 1998 to $750 million last year.

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