Screen Australia Drama Report reveals record high expenditure on home grown stories

Screen Australia’s annual Drama Report released today shows a record high expenditure on home grown stories, with $718 million spent on local productions, up 7% on last year.

The fresh expenditure comes at a time when a number of Australian dramas including Bite Club, Wanted, Sisters, Safe Harbour, Dead Lucky and 100 Words have struggled to attract a significant audience on FTA TV.

The Drama Report measures the health of the Australian screen industry by covering the production of local and foreign feature films, TV dramas, online programs plus PDV (post, digital and visual effects) activity.

The 2017/18 record local expenditure included 36 TV dramas such as Mystery Road, Playing for Keeps and the forthcoming Lambs of God, and their combined spend of $295 million was above the five-year average. Spend on Australian feature films was up 12% on last year to $321 million due to strong Official Co-production activity.

38 Australian feature films were made including box office hit Ladies in Black and the forthcoming Storm Boy.

10 children’s television programs went into production including fan favourite Bluey, with $49 million spent on Australian children’s programs, up 3% on last year’s spend but below the five-year average.

18 online drama titles went into production, with a 256% increase in expenditure, driven by content with longer episodes and a higher cost per hour.

Overall $814 million was spent on 133 screen productions in 2017/18 compared to $1.3 billion on 166 titles in 2016/17. This drop was largely due to reduced foreign film production spend. New South Wales accounted for the largest share of total expenditure in Australia (37%), while Western Australia ($37 million) and South Australia ($82 million) set new expenditure records.

Australian TV drama production was down on last year’s record, with 423 hours of content produced with combined budgets of $301 million and Australian spend of $295 million. The decline in hours can be attributed to the production of shorter-running series and mini-series. However, the average cost per hour to make mini-series reached $1.567m, indicating a trend towards high production value content.

Total budgets and expenditure for Australian online drama (which includes single episodes or series titles with total durations of 30 minutes or more), more than tripled in 2017/18 to $53 million. There were seven fewer online drama titles compared to 2016/17, however the higher volume of hours and significant increase in budgets stemmed from the production of content with longer episodes and higher cost per hour.

18 titles were made for first release online, including ABC iview’s Deadlock, SBS’s Homecoming Queens, Stan’s Romper Stomper, and Australian Netflix Originals Tidelands and an Untitled Chris Lilley Project. Titles made for release on YouTube included Life of Jess and Superwog (which was also subsequently released on ABC Comedy).

10 children’s dramas entered production in 2017/18 generating 71 hours of content (five-year average 109 hours), with a local spend of $49 million (five-year average of $56 million). Screen Australia says this decline was due to a number of factors including low Official Co-production activity with only one title produced, a decrease in the number of animated productions (which tend to generate a greater volume of content than live action titles), and the cyclical influence of the children’s content quotas on commercial free-to-air broadcasters.

Three titles went into production for the commercial broadcasters including Larry the Wonderpup (Channel 7), Space Chickens in Space (Nine Network), and The Bureau of Magical Things (Network Ten). As a first release broadcaster, the ABC financed six of the 10 children’s TV titles in production including Nowhere Boys series four, Spongo, Fuzz & Jalapena and Australian/Canadian Official Co-Production The Deep series 3.

Michael Brealey, Chief Operating Officer of Screen Australia said:

“It’s fantastic to see record expenditure on Australian projects demonstrating the demand for local content remains high. We’ve seen some incredible film, television and online projects go into production during this period, providing industry jobs across the whole of Australia, from Storm Boy in South Australia, mini-series Doctor Doctor in New South Wales, Top End Wedding in the Northern Territory, Official Co-production The Whistleblower in Victoria, the third series of Rosehaven in Tasmania, the mini-series Tidelands in Queensland, and the 30-episode serial The Heights in Western Australia.

 “Whilst overall the total expenditure figure this year was down, that was mainly due to no big-budget Hollywood movies starting to film during the year, and we know this has already improved. Dora the Explorer is shooting now, plus series Reef Break and feature Godzilla vs Kong are also confirmed, so adding in the Federal Government’s new $140 million Location Incentive to the mix, we anticipate foreign expenditure will significantly improve in 2018/19.”

“We also just had a record investment round for Australian television drama, so we expect to see a lift in television drama production in the next financial year.”