Leading figures in the British film industry have reacted with a mixture of wariness and bemusement at the prospect oftariffs announced by Donald Trumpon movies produced in “foreign lands”.
Rebecca O’Brien, producer of a string of films by Ken Loach including Palme d’Or winners The Wind That Shakes the Barley and I, Daniel Blake says that tariffs appear “simply unworkable given how intertwined and global the film industry is”. “I can see that Trump watches Hollywood collapsing and losing its jobs to the rest of the world but that’s because it’s a very expensive place to make films.”
O’Brien added: “No doubt it’ll take a while for the dust to settle, deals to be made and something or nothing to come out of this. What’s for certain, though, is there will be a pause in the industry while everyone runs around working out what to do. The fragile film economy definitely doesn’t need that.”
Colin Vaines, producer of Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool and Coriolanus, said that while it was “very unclear exactly what President Trump is intending”, it appeared “that his main aim appears to be to return more production to the US, but of course there are many other proposals which might help achieve that to some degree, including incentives like major film tax credits.”
Trump’s movie tariff announcement camea day after a meeting with actor Jon Voight, one of Trump’s so-called “Hollywood ambassadors”, who had proposed “limited tariffs” as part of a wide-ranging plan to boost US film production. The Queen director Stephen Frears had some sympathy for Voight, saying: “Trump is as usual hopeless at everything. I feel sorry for poor Jon Voight who, I imagine, made perfectly sensible suggestions. Subsidies, support etc. Trump failed to understand and bolloxed it all up. What a halfwit! Still, nobody got killed.”
Mike Figgis, director of the Oscar-winning Leaving Las Vegas said: “Like a lot of the Trump stuff it makes a good headline. I don’t think it will help Hollywood particularly as so much of the productions go to Atlanta now. The more interesting question would be, why are they continuing to make so many bad films at insanely inflated budgets which force them to go shopping overseas?”
Mark Cousins, director of A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things, said: “Film history is full of countries tipping the lever in favour of their own film industries. What’s new in Trump’s sudden announcement is the unreason, bellicosity and instinctive xenophobia.”
The UK appears to be particularly vulnerable to any attempt by the US president to prevent US studios shooting overseas, withsuggestions that tariffs could “wipe out the British film industry”. Figures show thatnon-British film and TV projectsbrought in £4.8bn, or 86% of production money spent in the UK, with the recent boom of studio construction –already in trouble– further threatened if productions dry up.
ActorBrian Coxdescribed the prospect of tariffs as a “disaster”, adding “[Trump is] not really understanding the point of view of how films are made, and what films cost, [how] the cost of films [has] gone up and the cost of films in America went up considerably … It’s a kind of nonsense and a divine ignorance on all their parts.”
With political figures such as California state governor Gavin Newsom pushing for a federal tax credit scheme, Jezz Vernon, producer and senior lecturer in film at the University of Exeter, says this could provide a viable alternative. “If Trump were to authorise and fund bigger regional tax credits in the US in tandem with state governors then we would see a big production shift back to the US. Just last week we saw Netflix move 3 Body Problem from the UK to Hungary to use their tax credit rebate which is higher than the UK.”
Vernon also pointed out that reciprocal tariffs would cause major problems: “It would instantly damage the global economy of Hollywood studios and the streamers – they rely on the economy of scale from worldwide subscribers and audiences to fund and monetise their productions. Instead of aiding Hollywood, the tariffs would immediately damage the central economic model that sustains them.”
The British actors’ union Equity criticised the “fragility” of the film and TV industry, with Equity general secretary Paul W Fleming saying: “A lot of the panic over the past 24 hours is due to the fragility in the system. This can be addressed positively through properly funding our public service broadcasters and ensuring an attractive and fair tax and investment environment for studios and production.”
Fleming added: “America’s objective is to generate more productions and more jobs in film. Is that going to be achieved by stopping filming Barbie, which was filmed here on British union agreements, or Wicked or Mission: Impossible? Clearly not. The industry tends to feed itself, so an upturn in American production is a good thing for the UK.”
Since making his bombshell announcement, Trump has appeared torow back on his comments, saying he was “not looking to hurt the industry” and planned to meet with Hollywood leaders.