Australian taxpayers picked up a significant portion of the budget for Chris Hemsworth’s latest box office flop, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” it has been revealed.
Australian taxpayers funded a substantial part of the Hollywood blockbuster starring Chris Hemsworth and Anna Taylor-Joy. The film, produced by one of the world’s biggest studios, had its production costs partly covered by Australian public funds.
The exact amount of public money used for this latest Mad Max installment remains undisclosed, as Screen New South Wales and Screen Australia keep these figures confidential. However, experts estimate that at least $183 million of public funds were spent to have the George Miller-directed action film shot in Australia.
“It’s incredibly expensive, and the value that the Australian public gets for that cost is questionable,” said Professor Kevin Sanson, head of the School of Communication at Queensland University of Technology, to news.com.au.
The government’s contribution to Warner Bros for “Furiosa” amounted to more than half of the film’s total $333 million budget. It is estimated that the NSW Government contributed $50 million, while Screen Australia spent around $133 million.
Despite its star-studded cast and extensive marketing campaign, the film’s box office performance has been disappointing. “Furiosa” has only earned US$160 million (AU$240 million) globally since its release four weeks ago.
“Taxpayers should absolutely question the money spent, not just on this production, but on the value returned from generous offsets more broadly,” said Professor Sanson. However, whether the film was popular, critically favored, or even good does not matter, according to Professor Sanson’s colleague, Amanda Lotz.
Professor Lotz, who heads the Transforming Media Industries research program at QUT and wrote “Netflix and Streaming Video: The Business of Subscriber-funded Video on Demand,” penned a critical op-ed about “Furiosa,” which is the most expensive movie ever made in Australia.
“The more pressing question is whether its making was a good use of taxpayer money,” Professor Lotz wrote for Nikkei Asia. This question is urgent as the Australian parliament is due to consider expanding tax rebates for movies and video series produced domestically.
Governments offer enticing tax rebates and offsets for international films to support the development of Australia’s film industry, provide cultural benefits, and drive economic gains. Iconic local films like “Muriel’s Wedding” and “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” significantly contributed culturally, while “The Matrix” provided substantial economic benefits.
In recent years, both criteria have been somewhat overlooked, argued Professor Sanson. A location offset, which attracts foreign productions to Australia, has “no significant Australian cultural test,” meaning there is no guarantee taxpayer funds “actually return anything of value or interest.”
In 2019, the government allocated $540 million for location offsets, which was meant to last until 2027. “It was completely spent by 2023,” revealed Professor Sanson.
Screen NSW stated, “Established in 2020, the Made in NSW fund is a five-year program with an original budget allocation of $175 million, designed to support the advancement of NSW as a destination for international and local feature films and major television drama programs.”
Since 2020, the funding has leveraged approximately $1.78 billion in production expenditure in NSW and created over 25,000 jobs in the state. It has attracted major international productions such as “Anyone But You,” “The Fall Guy,” and “The Kingdom of the Planet of The Apes,” along with Australian productions including “The Artful Dodger,” “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart,” and the upcoming “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” cementing NSW as the premier filmmaking destination in Australia.
A spokesperson for Screen Australia said, “Due to the tax secrecy provisions in the Taxation Administration Act, we are not allowed to disclose which titles receive the [producer] offset as it would identify the tax affairs of the recipient.”
The only publicly available information regarding the offset is the number and aggregate value of certificates issued, outlined in the annual report. In 2022/23, Producer Offset Final Certificates were issued to 214 projects, worth a total of $295.16 million. Some productions that receive the offset choose to publicly acknowledge it, sometimes including an end credit in the film.
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