Spend on UK film and high-end TV beat pre-Covid levels for the first time last year, the BFI‘s annual figures have revealed.
Investment in these projects shot up from 2023 by a hefty 31% to hit £5.6B ($7B), which for the first time since the pandemic ravaged the industry was ahead of the boom era pre-Covid levels.
As ever, the majority of the spend was on high-end TV (62%) but film saw the biggest increase, skyrocketing by 56% to £2.1B. High-end TV spend rose by 20% to £3.4B and was the third highest annual spend since the gamechanging tax relief was introduced in 2013. Productions made across the UK in 2024 included Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and Game of Thrones prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: the Hedge Knight. Big UK hits that premiered included Baby Reindeer and The Gentlemen.
The big increases from 2023 are not surprising given that that year’s figure was severely impacted by the Hollywood strikes, which virtually halted production including on multiple big-budget co-pros for around six months. Those strikes ended in early 2024 but last year was still a tricky one for the film and high-end TV (HETV) sector as the American market contracted and numerous streamers engaged in strategy rethinks. At the start of this year, the BBC revealed it has a number of big-budget shows on its slate it can’t fund due to a lack of co-pro funding from the States.
But there was clearly plenty inward investment last year, according to today’s stats. These annual stats are published by the BFI and incorporate film, HETV and box office.
As industry figures worry about future co-pro funding, inward investment and co-production spend on film and HETV in the UK reached £4.8B last year, representing a whopping 86% of the total spend.
Concerningly for HETV, spend on domestic projects slid quite dramatically by 22% to £598M. In film that figure rose by 24% to £186M, although this represents a still-low 9% of the overall spend on movies. By a strange quirk of the figures, movies greenlit by the streamers are counted as HETV because they use the HETV cultural test to access tax relief.
BFI boss Ben Roberts said production had “rebounded” after a “disrupted” 2023 but he raised concerns in particular about the HETV domestic drop. “What happens next will be critical,” he added. “Continued investment in skills and infrastructure, alongside strong government support is essential to ensuring the UK remains a magnet for international productions while strengthening our independent sector for the future.”
