Brexit Strikes Again – Media Content Quotas

 

The UK wants to leave the European Union. The European Union is now pissy and wants the UK to leave. They’re like a married couple that one night suddenly decided they wanted a divorce but because it was sudden they have no idea how it’s going to work. Who gets the couch? Who’s the cat going to live with? Do we split the retirement fund evEN THOUGH I HATE HER!?!?

It’s an information and decision free environment.

So here we are! It turns out nobody knows how arts funding in Europe is going to work after Brexit! Fun!

 

There’s a two-year limit on negotiating Britain’s exit from the EU and if the devalued pound stays at current levels until the exit, that’s good news for U.S. companies looking to shoot in the UK and could see a rise in acquisitions of British companies. It still remains unclear whether UK productions will stop receiving funds from EU arts programs such as the MEDIA program (MEDIA co-funded, for example, Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or winner I, Daniel Blake, which is up for five BAFTA noms this year) and whether UK TV and film productions will be eligible for the European content quota system, which is the backbone of many Euro productions.

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/brexit-theresa-may-unveils-long-151442794.html

Oh… oops.

If you didn’t know the EU funds some local content production as well as requiring local content to be shown… and now, apparently, nobody is sure how that system is going to work if the UK leaves.

The UK is a popular destination for film shooting nowadays with the tax breaks that companies can get and some recent upgrades to film infrastructure… The recent Star Wars movie was filmed partly in the UK.

The UK also gives a lot of money to the EU. Some of that money goes to arts programs. That money then goes to fund art productions in various European countries.

So if the UK leaves the EU, it’s going to throw a wrench into the entire European content production system. To prevent that the powers that be have to come up with a plan to continue funding and define what is and isn’t fund-able content. Which they don’t seem to be doing.

So…

It’s really an example of how complex systems are these days…

This is just one of a trillion different things that need to be worked out during Brexit and yet nobody knows anything.

Bigly problem coming up.

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